TUSSLE IN SURGERY

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 12 July 1935, Page 5

TUSSLE IN SURGERY

YOUNG MAN GIVEN GAS UNBS UP WITH BLACK EYE NURSE TRIES A HEADLOCK. As all dentists know, not every Patient is a suitable subject for “gas.” This fact was demonstrated in a Wellington dental surgery on Wednesday when a young man, after being given gas, leaped from the chair and involved th© dentist in a tussle which disturbed most of the furniture in the room as well as the equanamity of all concerned.

On arrival at the surgery the patient, having expressed a wish to take gas for an extraction, was asked as usual if he knew himself to be a “good gas patient.” To some people gas is merely an incident ; they breathe it in, sleep and, having reawakened, leave the surgery with cheerful nonchalance. With others gas has an upsetting effect, and in these oases dentists usually advise alternative forms of anaesthesia.

Relieving himself to be in the former class, the young man called for gas. He settled himself in the chair and sniffed. . . . When he woke he was kneeling in the middle of the room and grappling with the dentist. The nurse was gripping him from behind in a valiant species of headlock, but this was not preventing him from giving the dentist some anxious moments.

Normally an inoffensive person, the young man was horrified to discover that he had done his best to wreck the surgery. A desk was out of place and a table awry. The nurse was alarmed and the dentist inclined to be peevish. The young man had the beginnings of a black eye—but the tooth was untouched

After a general dusting down ancT a little talk the operation was completed, this time with a local anaesthetic.