THE DENTISTS CHAIR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1072, 10 November 1882, Page 4

THE DENTISTS CHAIR.

The dentist’s office holds in the imagination of the present ger.eratiou the place once held in the imagination of cur ancestors by the torture chamber of the Inquisition. Men will endure almost any pain except that inflicted by a dentist, and so intense is this horror of the dentist’s office that the mere sight of the “ operating chair ” -will often drive away a toothache that for hours has rendered the patient nearly frantic. There is nothing particularly horrible in the appearance of the operating chair. It lacks the cruel headclasps of the photographer’s chair, and does not differ greatly from the barber’s chair, into which the American citizen habitually flings himse'f and goes to bed after having partially undressed himself. The array of the dentists’ tools laid on the little table in close proximity to the chair is, indeed, rather appalling. The patient cannot help noticing how well some of these too's are fitted to search out and tear his sensitive nerves, and how others seem intended to drive tunnels through his jaws, and to pierce upward to the top of his skull or downward into the recesses of Lis boots. He has also good reason to fear the firm and remorseless hand of the den fast, and he knows that within two minutes after placing himself in the chair the dentist will threat a small steel crowbar into the verj seat of his toothache, and will simultaneously remark in an exasperatinglv quiet way, “ Ah ! it seems to be a little sensitive does it 1” Granting that the dentist’s chair is not in itself an alarming object, it is so closely associated with the agent and instruments of torture that we need not wonder that it is dreaded with such intensity by all sorts and conditions of men. These are persons of strong nerves CV.d ascetic temperaments whopiide themselves on the fearlessness with which they visit dentists and the calmness with which they suffer torture* The majority of men, however, only consult a dentist when reduced todesperation by long continued toothache. In their horror of the dentist they will not only undergo hours of toothache, hut they will inflict un-

speakahle pain upon themselves in the effort to extract their own teeth Of course nothing could be more unreasonable than this preference of self inflicted pain to that inflicted by professional forceps. The expert dentist who pulls a tooth iu the twinkling ot an eye undoubtedly inflicts intense pain besides frightening the patient into the temporary belief that Ids entire skeleton, having become mysteriously and indissolubly connected with the tooth, has been dragged completely out of his body ; but after all, the man who pulls his own teeth inflicts worse pain upon himself than the d°ntist could possibly have in dieted. When an unhappy child is undergoing his first great trial—that of losing his front teeth—he is often promised immunity from the terrible dentist on condition that he will tie a string to the particlar tooth that needs to be removed, and will permit some member of the family to slyly twitch the string. This process cannot, be tried by adults suffering from toothache, since self-respect forbids a man to go about the house with a string dangling from his mouth, and a wholesome fear of sudden death would deter any person from suddenly pulling such a string. Various other metho is of self-torture have, however, been invented by men determined to avoid the dentist’s chair at all hasards, which are the same in principle as the method just mentioned, but are better adapted to adult teeth.