BUREAU OF FURTHER INCONVENIENCES |
| DIRECTOR Eunice Hrodebert |
ABOUT
I was consulted a short time since by a sailor, who, suffering from a decayed tooth while on his passage from a port in the north of Europe, was under the necessity of submitting to the operation of extraction. Having no instrument on board for this purpose, and the pain being so great as to unfit him for his duty, the following rude method was resorted to. At his suggestion, one of his shipmates placed the edge of a chisel against the upper part of the decayed tooth, and then striking the handle with a small mallet, the tooth was immediately knocked out from its socket. He was relieved at once from the pain, and was so well pleased with this rough mode of operating, that he thought himself entitled to lay some claim to an invention for a new and expeditious method of extracting teeth. His confidence, however, in the ultimate success of this plan, was but of short duration, —on the third day after the operation his face began to swell, and he felt considerable pain in the cheekbone, extending all over that side of the face and jaw bone from which the tooth had been removed. Attributing this to a cold arising from exposure while attending to his duty on board the vessel, various external fomentations were made use of, hut without affording any relief.