Bloggers

The bad old days

Apr 17, 2017

I went to the dentist a few days ago, and while I was there, I had one tooth removed and another one filled. The process began with me lying down comfortably on a specially designed reclining chair which looked more likely to belong in a spacecraft than any surgery on earth!

On my arrival, the first thing the dentist did was to prepare me; he did this by giving me a couple of pretty well painless injections in my gums, around the sites of the two offending molars. He then left me alone for a few minutes while the anaesthetic took effect. Once I was ‘frozen, he proceeded to fill the tooth with the cavity in it, using a high-speed drill that whined a lot but was delightfully smooth, and painless, in my mouth, after which he filled the resulting hole with a white substance, which he hardened by shining an ultraviolet light on it. Next, he moved to the extraction of the other tooth, again a completely painless job, with my only discomfort being a bit of pressure as he got a hold of the offending article and a few creaks as it was pulled from the socket. There was hardly any blood, and the whole operation was completed by my going back into the waiting room to enjoy a nice cup of tea before heading for home.

It was as I was walking along the street, after my visit, that it occurred to me how much dentistry has changed and improved since I used to go to one in Bristol, about seventy years ago! For a start, having those two jobs would have required two separate visits then, and I would go into the surgery and sit on a hard, upright leather chair, quaking with fear as the dentist laid out his gear around me. Then it was time to do the filling – no anaesthetic was offered or applied, I just had to sit back with my eyes tightly closed as the dentist thrust something like a small road-drill in my mouth. It made an awful noise, reminiscent of a motor-bike engine – nothing like the quiet, high-pitched hum of today, and it rattled violently as he pressed it into the cavity, the vibrations going right through my head and down as far as my stomach! He then mixed a lump of silver coloured metallic putty up and proceeded to fill the crater he had created with it, leaving a harsh, metallic taste in my mouth which took about a week to fade. (On top of all this agony, it was only recently that I discovered the filling he used comprised mainly of mercury, now recognised as quite an unpleasant poison!).

But this wasn’t the end of the torture! A week later I had to go back to have the tooth out, sitting in the same uncomfortable chair as before. At least this time I was given anaesthetic – gas! If you haven’t had a tooth out under gas, (considered much too dangerous to use now, except in very special circumstances), then I have to tell you, you should avoid it at all costs if it is ever offered, which is unlikely! First, the dentist inserts a very large gag into your mouth, to make sure it stays open while you are unconscious – it always seems to be made to fit a mouth about four sizes bigger than yours and feels as if your jaw is going to snap under the strain. Then a foul smelling rubber mask thing, attached to a pipe, is thrust over your mouth and nose and starts to hiss loudly. You very quickly become unconscious, or more accurately nearly unconscious, because you never go out completely and you can hear the beating of your heart throughout the experience, sort of a hollow, echoing “boing…boing…boing” that seems to go on forever. Then you wake up, to find your mouth full of blood, the dentist saying “rinse out please” before he stuffs a large ball of cotton wool in your mouth, supposedly to stop you bleeding to death, and before you know it you’re walking out of the premises, on your way home again!

I was going to write about some more of the primitive disasters we used to put up with, in the days of post-war medicine, but I’m afraid I have run up against my word-count limit now, so any other happy stories are going to have to wait for another opportunity, sometime in the near future.

If you’re off to see a dentist yourself, later today, I promise you it is a positive pleasure to go there now, especially when compared to seventy years ago!