A MONK DENTIST.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1737, 15 May 1888, Page 3

A MONK DENTIST.

' Near the bridge of Quattro Oapi in Rome, is the workshop of Fra Orsenico, a monk, "who, year after year, standing on the same spot, has grown grey in performing one kind of dreadful service, for the poor." Close by the wstend of the old bridge is a largo glass door opening into a little room, and above the door is a piece of faded tapestry, upon which, in yellow letters, are worked the words " Fra Orsenico, Dentista." Pra Owenico is a tall, powerfully built, gentle-looking man of about fifty, and «rer «ice he was thirty he has outwardly at least limited his life to the fulfilment of one corporal work of mercy. From sunrise to sunset he is thereat his post ready to pull out the teeth of all who suffer and come to him, and without a charge of any kind except a request for three Hail Mary*. Along one side of the room, and beneath the table upon which the monk keeps the tools of his trade, are two solid oak chests, without lids an] filled with teeth. Thousands and thousands of teeth of all sizes lie piled up there in those boxes—the results of the monk's industry. Above the jtable is a narrow shelf of wood which runs round the room, aud upon which are lovingly arranged all sorts of monstrous fangs, stubborn stumps, that it required a Yery -triumph of

skill and strength to extract. Fra Orsenico generally pulls out dally about a hundred teeth, and he has drawn as many as four hundred teeth in a single day. And he has been doing that for twenty years. From first to last he has extracted something like a million. It is probably not necessary to add that the monk's methods are very simple. A tooth that is drawn can never ache again, and antethetics are costly, and require a great deal more time than the operator has got to give.