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Thursday 7 October 2010

Hoorah for Anaesthetics ...



I am generally a sort of squeamish person but recently I have been engrossed reading the biography of the father of surgery 'John Hunter'. 'The Knife Man'; a fabulous historical read written and published by Wendy Moore, Bantum Books. This is a truly rivoting read, ghoulish in places and certainly not for the faint hearted. 

Recently found are the First Aid Box and Dental Shade Chart pictured above, (now listed on Etsy for sick  shoppers! haha). And so today I thought I'd share a dental extract and extraction, from this great book;

'It will be scarcely necessary to observe, that the new teeth should always be perfectly sound, and taken from a mouth that has the appearance of that of a person sound and healthy...'

John Hunter

...Advertising for donors, he soon attracted queues of impoverished girls and boys clamouring to earn a few pennies in return for their healthy teeth. While his well to do paying customers waited expectantly in a comfortable chair, Hunter yanked out a healthy front tooth from one of his ragged donors and promptly implanted it in the gaping mouth of his patient. Deftly he tied the new implant to it's neighbours with silk thread, or sometimes seaweed, and the gappy youngsters were sent away with mouths bleeding and fingers clasped around their meagre earnings...

How lucky are we to be alive now and not in the 18th century, phew... 

3 comments:

Heidi said...

Can you just imagine, I read that to my boys and there like cool except they too are glad for DR. Zizi.

abigail said...

yikes!
Makes me want to call my dentist and thank him.

Laura said...

ee gads! i love the pun:) it is- as my teenagers say: sick. which means good in teenland:)

 
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