Dental anaesthesia: painless tooth extraction by congelation.

  • Quinton, J. Richard.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dental anaesthesia: painless tooth extraction by congelation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    noble martyrs, whose nerves were steeled agamst their tortures by that mighty power of conscience, that soul-absorbing devotion, which dominated over all physical endurance. Cranmer could hold his hand in burning flames, because he was all obedient to a higher law. But the martyr is not the man of common life. No great stimulus, no lofty soul-absorbing motives, brace up the nerves of him who submits his mouth to be robbed of its dental constituents. It is a law of necessity which is laid upon him, and that law bears ungraciously^ Thus it is, that those who would unflinchingly and proudly stand to a battery’s Are in the heat of battle array, holding in martial contempt all suffer- ing and pain, willingly accept a painless dentistry in tlie cool and quiet moment of a perverse necessity. Many of our bravest soldiers have told me they could stand to be shot at, but they shrink from a pair of dental forceps. Yet, ordinarily, the operation is but brief. This to some minds is sufflcient apology for rejecting anoesthesia. The brevity of a pain and its results are not, however, always of equal balance. I have seen a comparatively slight, a very momentary pain, lay prostrate the stoutest and bravest of men. The list of sequences to the mere withdrawing of a tooth which might be quoted, from simple ex- haustion up to ejiilepsy and paralysis, sufflciently
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