Childhood Experiences Of Long Ago At The Dreaded Dentist.

[Canary42]

I've just been reading through a Facebook thread about people's childhood memories of dentists, and it was quite entertaining so I thought I'd bring the topic up here. There were lots of horror stories about unsympathetic dentists, and the terrible experiences of gas, but also just a few pleasant memories.

I had a tooth extracted by gas in 1953, and it was indeed an awful experience - the stinky rubber mask, the terrifying dreaming, and the copious vomiting afterwards. Still shudder to think about it.

Let's hear some tales of childhood experiences of visits to the dentist, good and bad as you found it.

[Bobbisox1]

That would of been interesting to hear your Mum’s theory on it Shirley x

[burlyshirley]

She did say at one point that it just went 'round and round and round', but she was still slightly under ....

[tiggerblue10]

I have a very small jaw and had to have all my wisdom teeth out when around 19. Even the ones that hadn't come through yet. I was drugged up the the eye balls but was awake throughout the whole procedure and remember seeing the dentist up close and that was it. Took me 3 weeks to recover and lived on soup.

[sandyRoe]

They put a rubber thing in your mouth to stop you closing it. Then came the smell of the mask and the hiss of the gas. Even more unpleasant than the anaesthetic injected into the gum that came when you were grown up a bit.

[barry1010]

I can literally taste the stuff they injected you with, I have a strange memory which triggers taste and smells.

[Bazile]

barry1010

//I didn't mind the gas, I was never sick. My dentist always gave me a toffee if I hadn't had a filling, then it was a lollipop.//

lol - how funny is that ?

A dentist dishing out toffees and lollipops ?

[barry1010]

It's true, Bazile. Maybe he was making sure I'd be back for more fillings

[rayzorless]

Ferham Clinic mid 1950s they used to strap you into the chair. I cried my eyes out before they even started

[theprof]

My mum was a patient of a dentist in the 50's whose "surgery" was in a sparsely equipped parlour in the front room of his terraced house. On one occasion, my dad was allowed to sit in the room whilst the dentist replaced my mum's filling. Every few minutes, the dentist would disappear into the next room for a couple of minutes and return the worse for wear. My dad got fed up with this inattention and followed him out. It turned out he was swigging from a bottle of Haig whisky!
The odd thing is that my mum thought the world of him - no dental hygienists or receptionist around in those days.

[Peter Pedant]

just as well comment

Dentists used to do house visits - like GPs
They had a treadle portable drill....

AND

the original poster mentioned 1953 - dental anaesthesia. This was almost certainly done with a Lucy Baldwin apparatus. I hesitate to tell you what oxygen they started off with ( 5%) and relied on the first and second gas effects
Dont worry boys they were always present ( the two effects)
Lucy B was the wife of the Prime Minister and she took hold of the problem of dental chair deaths. 1925 I think It had an ingenious oxygen failure system. Think of the lid of a lavatory seat. The two flows went past such an arrangement. The seat cd flip either way and was kept neutral by the pressure on each side. SO if one supply failed the pressure wd go to 0, and the seat wd flip over and trigger cut off of both gases.

Learn a thing a day