On Fri, 7 Sep 2007 17:33:10 +0200, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<athel_cb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>and if it's true that "discomfort" has replaced "pain" in the dentist's
>vocabulary then it's because discomfort has, to a large extent,
>replaced pain in dentist's chair. I doubt whether any pain we may feel
>nowadays in the dentist's chair bears much relation to the pain our
>grandparents felt.
"Grandparents"? You must be a youngster. Anyone old enough to have
had a cavity prepared for filling with a Jordan-Day dental drill knows
pain. The Jordan-Day drill was belt driven - actually, a cord rather
than a belt - that ran much, much, slower than today's drills. As any
dentist will tell you, it's the heat that causes pain when the drill
is used. Newer drills squirt water through the handpiece to cool the
tooth.
The slower, less-powerful, J-D drills required longer drilling times.
Gentle dentists would drill, stop, squirt water with a bulb syringe,
and drill again. I never found a gentle dentist.
Novocaine injections were done with re-usuable needles that became
dull. The bore was larger. There was no surface deadener used prior
to the shot.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL
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