The Dentist's Chair

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 157, 6 July 1936, Page 9

The Dentist's Chair

A SUFFERER REFLECTS OLD-TIME HORRORS My grandmother used to tr 11 mo of a celebrated quack dentist who regularly visited the Castlegato of the town where she lived on Saturday nights drew the teeth of innumerable sufferers, says a writer in the Manchester Guardian. 110 took his stand upon a wagonette drawn up by the Market Cross and set about filling tho seats with victims of toothache. Somoono should havo painted that miserablo load of men and women with their swollen faces wrapped in scarves. When he had assembled all his patients ho announced to tho interested multitude that extraction was about to begin. I should explain that on the Saturday night tho Castlegato was thronged with people and that by tho light of naphtha flares varying commerce was carried on at fifty booths. Besides tho shouting of the salesmen thero were tho musie of pipers and fiddlers and tho bawled admonitions of Adventists and Salvationists. At tho moment when the quack grasped his pincors a brass band stationed near would strike up a military march and play it fortissimo for tho next fifteen minutes. Simple folks for long thought that these musicians served their ar; alone, but tho coincidences of the pianissimo passages with tho quack’s patter and of the fortissimo with tho screams of tho patients aroused the curiosity of the suspicious. It was discovered that the musicians were there, if not to alleviate pain, at least to conceal it. A description of tho sceno on the deck of tho wagonette might havo been permissablc in tho eighteenth century. To-day we are less robust. I need only say that the occasion had all the dreadful fascination of a public execution. Remedies for Toothache.

Those were tho days of heroic remedies. Of what iron wills our grandfathers proved themselves the possessors when they attached their offending tooth to a door-knob or to a brick and then slammed the door or dropped the brick! I myself had tho misfortune to be a child before the golden ago of dentistry, and I remember tho first serious bout of toothache ns a crisis not only in my life, but in my homo. We lived in tho depths of tho country, and our only contact with dental surgery was through a travelling dentist who once a week held court in tho parlour of a cottage six miles away. When first my tooth began to ache, my cheek to swell, and I to whimper all the old remedies were tried. As wo were Scots, whisky was tried first. I was given a thimbleful and told to hold my head at such an angle that the tooth might havo the benefit of its magical properties. Bui my jaw only grew sorer and sorer, so my mother made a poultice of. I think, pepper and vinegar on brown paper When I held this to my cheex it gonerated warmth and helped to make the pain tolerable for five minutes or so. But alas! My father was of tho opin ion that tho poultice might set up some skin disease. There ensued a violent difference of opinion which shook my faith not only in all medical palliatives but also in the infallibility of my parents. Soon, but not too soon, tho dentist’s visiting-day came round. Mother and I mounted our bicycles and cycled six miles to the cottage, where I was con fronted by a person looking exactly like the crooked sheriff in an old-fash-ioned “Western.” He wore leather leggings and a felt hat, walked with a bandy-legged, horsy gait, and had an enormous grey moustache shaped like a Cupid’s bow. After the usual reassurances he "yanked” out the tooth with a sickening wrench (in spite of the cocaine) and sent me home.

My Next Experience. I cherish no resentment against him. for he was a man of action who did not waste words. My next experience was less happy, for I was sent to a denti.Sv in town. He might bo described as oj tho histrionic type. He had a heavily lined face and a mass of black hair ano strikingly resembled a stock company character whom I later known On taking a single glance inside my mouth he registered an expression of agonised dismay, tugged, his long hair with his hands, strode once or twico tho length of the room, then halted suddenly, 1 turned upon me, and exclaimed, “Tho worst mouth I’ve ever seen.” This to a boy of elevenl I have often wondered just why he said that, because time proved that my ! teeth wero as good as tho next man’s From the accounts of other victims, i suspect that he said it to everyone, a; other and moro humane dentists make al remark about the weather. He may have thought that ho would bo given credit for triumph over the innate! rottenness of my teeth when he had effected the few necessary rpairs. I took an instant dislike to him, refused to return, and by a magnificent display j of lying and obstinacy (not to mention considerable stoicism) put off going to > tho dentist for many years. Tho dental revolution was due. Even to this day | I cannot help feeling that the little sons and daughters of my friends aro luck- j ier than they need be when they tell ' me what a nice man the dentist is and that they love to visit him.