I do not love dentists. In this antipathy I am not unique, I fancy. One
never sees photographs of family dentists standing on mantelpieces heavily
framed in silver; and, though _The Forceps_ presents a coloured supplement
depicting a prominent ivory-hunter with every Christmas number, there is, I
am told, no violent demand for it outside the Profession.
This is not to be wondered at. A man who spends his life climbing into
people's mouths and playing "The Anvil Chorus" on their molars with a
monkey-wrench, who says, "Now this won't hurt you in the least," and then
deals one a smart rap on a nerve with a pickaxe--such a man cannot expect
to be popular. He must console himself with his fees.
I do not love dentists, I repeat, but I am also not infatuated with
toothache. It is not that I am a coward. Far from it. Arterial sclerosis,
glycosuria, follicular tonsillitis and, above all, sleeping sickness I can
bear with fortitude--that is, I feel sure I could--but toothache, no! I am
not ashamed of it. Every brave man has at least one weakness. Lord
ROBERTS'S was cats. Achilles' was tendons. Mine is toothache (Biographers,
please note). When my jaw annoys me I try to propitiate it with libations
of whisky, brandy, iodine, horse-blister and patent panaceas I buy from
sombreroed magicians in the Strand. If these fail I totter round to the
dentist, ring the bell and run away. If the maid catches me before I can
escape and turns me into the waiting-room I examine the stuffed birds and
photographs of Brighton Pier until she has departed, then slither quietly
down the banisters, open the street door and gallop. If I am pushed
directly into the _abattoir_ I shake the dentist warmly by the hand, ask
after his wife and children, his grandfather and great-aunt, and tell him I
have only dropped in to tune the piano. If that is no good I try to make an
appointment for an afternoon this year, next year, some time, never. If
that too is useless and he insists on putting me through it there and then,
I take every anodyne he's got--cocaine, morphia, chloroform, ether, gas,
also a couple of anæsthetists to hold my hand when I go off and kiss me
when I come round again.
One of my chief objections to dentists is that they will never listen to
reason; explanations are quite thrown away on them. They only let you talk
at all in order to get your face open, and then into it they plunge their
powerful antiseptic-tasting hands and you lose something. I never go near a
dentist without paying the extreme penalty. (None of those cunning little
gold-tipped caps or reinforced concrete suspension-bridges for me. Out it
comes. Blood and iron every time). I admit they frequently appease my
anguish. Almost invariably among the teeth of which they relieve me at each
sitting is included the offending one. But still I maintain my right to
have a say in my own afflictions. The doctors let one. I've got a physician
who lets me have any disease I fancy (except German measles and Asiatic
cholera; for patriotic reasons he won't hear a good word spoken for either
of them; says we've got just as good diseases of our own. Damned
insularity!).
If I send for this doctor he comes along, sits quietly beside my bed,
eating my grapes, while I tell him where the pain isn't. The recital over
he hands me a selection of ailments to pick from. I choose one. He tells me
what the symptoms are, drinks my invalid port, creeps downstairs and breaks
the news to the hushed and awe-stricken family. A chap like that makes
suffering a pleasure and is a great comfort in a home like mine, where a
sick bed is the only sort you are allowed to lie in after 10 A.M. Without
the fellow's ready sympathy I doubt if I should secure any sleep at all.
One gets no assistance of that kind from dentists, although they give you
more pain in ten seconds than a doctor does in ten years.
No dentist ever sees me home after the slaughter, orders me a diet of
chicken breast, _pêche Melba_ and champagne, or warns my family that I am
on no account to be disturbed until lunch. No, they jerk your jaw off its
hinges and dump your remains on the doorstep for the L.C.C. rubbish cart to
collect.
Another thing: dentists should not be allowed out loose about the streets.
They exercise a blighting influence. You are strolling along in the
sunshine, head high, chest expanded, telling some wide-eyed young thing
what you and HAIG did to LUDENDORFF, when suddenly you meet the dentist.
You look at him, he looks at you, and his eyes seem to say, "What ho, my
hero! Last week you went to ground under my sofa and couldn't be dislodged
until I put the page-boy in to ferret you."
"And what happened then," inquires the wide-eyed young thing, "after you
had caught the Hun tank by the tail and ripped it up with a tin-opener?"
"After that," says the eye of the dentist, "you wept, you prayed, you lay
on the floor and kicked, you--"
"And did you kill all the crew yourself?" bleats the maiden, "single-handed
--every one of them?"
"Oh, I--er," you stutter--"what I mean to say--that is--Oh, dash it, let's
go and get tea somewhere, what?"