I don’t think any person can claim that a visit to the dentist is a pleasant experience. My mother, God love her, took a lot of fluoride tablets when she was pregnant, and consequently visits in my early childhood were relatively pain free. Fluoride added to drinking water these days also helps.

However, you may shudder hearing about the experiences of people going to the dentist 100 years ago. It is all a true story according to my father, local historian Clive Emery.

Half a century ago he wrote that his own father “was a wiz” if we ever got sick with home remedies but there was one thing he could not cure, and that was toothache; sore throats were fixed by a dusting of ground alum.  

But the former required the attention of a dentist, if a mouth wash of baking soda failed to effect a cure.

He wrote that in such circumstances his mother, our grandmother, mother would convince his father, my grandfather, that it was necessary to take us to the dentist, John E. King in Kiama.   

His surgery was in Manning Street, at the top of a long flight of creaking stairs, and even a tearful appeal to Mother that the tooth had stopped aching, would not stop her from leading the offending tooth and its owner into the surgery, where an awful cocktail of smells, mostly chloroform, together with a howling child with a bloody handkerchief to his mouth and being borne out of the surgery by his mother. 

A kerosene tin with its bottom spattered with blood and teeth, was enough to convince the bravest lad to cry quits.

But Mother would have none of it. Mr. King was the man to stop a boy from wailing all day about a toothache. She simply could not put up with the wailing any longer, and insisted Mr. King would fix the tooth.

Upon examination, he always declared the ache was not the top tooth we pointed out, but its corresponding bottom one, so to prove he was right he pulled them both for the price of one. 

This wasn't a bad bargain when you look at it, but the repetition made a mess of one's permanent grinders on each visit.

As it happened, we were almost anaesthetised before we sat in his chair. A short examination during which he adjusted his glasses before pronouncing a verdict which was always an extraction, we were invited to: 'open wider please,' while he advanced with the hypodermic needle and filled one's mouth with anaesthetic, and then took over with the pliers.

A dentist/barber chair at the GLaM. They were interchangeable as were the users

.In a trice there was a tinny sound as the tooth joined the others in the kerosene tin and would ache no more. Mother always brought one of Dad's big handkerchiefs and this was pushed into the mouth. She paid John and thanked him for his trouble, and it was down the stairs and into the car before it got any cold air into the mouth. Dad would say, 'another one gone', and start the engine and we'd head for home. It took about four hours before one's tongue was able to be used, or to swallow, for both throat and tongue had also been anaesthetized and were quite numb.

Then the venerable John sold out to dentist Turton, who loved filling teeth rather than pulling them. 

There was another dentist named Denning who came to the Gerringong school and operated in the Memorial Hall. He didn't have a motor-driven drill like Turton but had one which he operated with a foot pedal and sent the wheels spinning with a string belt running on pulleys, and when he got it up to speed the drill was applied. In the meantime, he wrapped his arm around your head, so he wouldn't drill a hole through your cheek if it jumped out of the hole he was making for the amalgam filling.  

If he happened to hit your tongue with the drill he said 'sorry' in your ear but kept on drilling. He must have learned the value of a kerosene tin during apprenticeship, for he too, brought one along for the teeth the students could spare.

But I think my worst and most memorable experience was with dentist Mr. Butler of Berry whom I called upon in later years. Two days after an extraction my jaw swelled up and rested on my chest for nearly a fortnight, and when I breathed, I was accompanied by a swarm of sympathetic blowflies who were disappointed that I stayed alive!   

After a month my mouth had resumed its shape, and I went back for another extraction, and I'm blowed if the same thing didn't happen!

I was rinsing my mouth with a wash of Condie's crystals three times a day, and my tongue needed a shave, but I was unable to shave either my face or my tongue for the next fortnight!

That was an experience I hope never to repeat!

Fortunately, I retained sufficient molars to see me through, aided by a few caps of gold and porcelain, and the expertise of modern practitioners that would have sent Dad turning Catherine-wheels if he knew what they charged, for what he paid was in cold hard cash, and there was no such thing as Medicare, nor any redress under the canopy of Heaven!

Those were my father Clive’s experiences of dentists in the days of yore, a recurring nightmare for every young person. So if your children are whining about a visit to the dentists, tell them they’re lucky it’s 2024.