By Betty Kirkpatrick
If the NHS gets as bad as some commentators fear it might, we had better dig out some of the old remedies that were used in the days when people lived miles from doctors and dentists and could not afford their services anyway. People unable to find a NHS dentist might be already doing that.
In the days before regular brushing with an array of toothpastes, and certainly before flossing, some people’s teeth were in a right old state. Not surprisingly, they were prone to toothache, described by Robert Burns in a poem on the subject as the "hell o’ a’ diseases".
One old remedy used when seeking relief from toothache involved cloves. The cloves were ground down to a powder which was then placed on the aching tooth in the hope of relieving the pain. Some people still use this remedy, although clove oil is often now used.
Cloves have a pleasant smell, calling up thoughts of Christmas and mulled wine. The bases of some of the other cures did not have such a pleasant aroma, especially after they had been in a mouth for some time. In one suggested cure, an attempt at assuaging pain was made by cutting up an onion and placing a small piece on the affected tooth. Alternatively, a small piece of cloth was soaked in onion juice and placed on the tooth.
Garlic was also thought to bring relief to the toothache sufferer. A clove of garlic was placed on the aching tooth, sometimes after being rolled in rock salt. One hopes that the toothache victim who tried either the onion cure or the garlic cure – or, worse, both – was not planning a close encounter of the romantic kind in the near future. Both cures create pleasant mouth-watering smells when they are being fried together in olive oil, but not the day after on someone’s breath.
Another store cupboard toothache remedy involved pepper. The pepper powder was placed in the painful tooth cavity, and sometimes salt was added to the pepper before it was administered. You could say that you added seasoning to the cavity.
Whisky was, and is, a favourite cure for toothache. The whisky is soaked in a plug of cotton wool and placed over the tooth. Sometimes a glass is drunk as well, just to give the cure a fighting chance.
In Australia, apparently, there was a variation on the whisky cure. Someone ministering to a toothache sufferer would dip a small piece of brown paper in whisky, sprinkle this with pepper, and apply it to the spot on the face where the pain was. That part of the face was then covered with a flannel bandage. Sounds like a waste of good whisky!
None of these remedies is particularly strange and some may well be still used, but there were some more unusual ones. For example, boiled pine leaves were sometimes added to the offending tooth. I hope they were always well-boiled. A prickly pine needle would be likely to cause even more pain to an inflamed cavity. Another remedy involving trees was sometimes to be found in the Highlands when the bark of the ash tree was burned and the remains applied to the sore tooth.
A weirder remedy involved tying a string round the little toe of your left foot if the toothache was on the right-hand side of your face. If the toothache was on the left-hand side, you tied the string round the little toe of your right foot. Perhaps the idea was to tie the string so tightly that the toe was so painful that it distracted your attention away from your tooth.
It used to be thought in some quarters that a painful tooth cavity was caused not by neglect of the teeth or over-indulgence in sweet things, but by a worm that had worked its way there. To get rid of the worm, the afflicted person was asked to sniff salt up the nose. Alternatively, they could smoke tobacco until they were sick. I would think that this could take quite a lot of time in some cases and nowadays the worm-in-the-tooth smokers would have to stand outside.
Probably, the whisky toothache cure is the best one. After a few glasses you will be too comatose to feel the pain from the tooth or anywhere else.
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