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The Facemaker
I’ve read part of Lindsey Fitzharris’s book The Facemaker, about the British physician Harold Gillies, who developed techniques for reconstructing the faces of men who had been hideously wounded in World War One; the No Strings Attached Book Club will discuss it in a week and a half. Before even getting into the war, I was reminded of the pain and disability which people in those days could suffer from dental problems, the British in particular being noted for bad teeth. Fitzharris mentions one eager volunteer for the war who had his rotting upper teeth pulled, and offered to have the lower ones pulled as well.
People in those days certainly suffered pain, just as people do today, but there seems to have been a greater expectation that they would tough it out, although, of course, there was also a market for laudanum and other analgesics. I remember George Orwell’s account of being ill in a crowded French hospital ward, and of his writing about the Good Old Days which for him and his readers were only a few decades gone. Back then, the astringent socialist wrote, a charity patient having a tooth pulled would not be given anesthetic; he wasn’t paying for it, the thinking went, so why give it to him?
People in those days certainly suffered pain, just as people do today, but there seems to have been a greater expectation that they would tough it out, although, of course, there was also a market for laudanum and other analgesics. I remember George Orwell’s account of being ill in a crowded French hospital ward, and of his writing about the Good Old Days which for him and his readers were only a few decades gone. Back then, the astringent socialist wrote, a charity patient having a tooth pulled would not be given anesthetic; he wasn’t paying for it, the thinking went, so why give it to him?