Faced with the choice of enduring a bad
toothache or going to the dentist, we generally tried to ride out the bad
tooth.
-
Joseph Barbera
I’d
just like to start out by saying that I was inspired to write this essay by the
fact that, while I write this, I’ve recently been to the dentist to have my
wisdom teeth taken out. That was yesterday. It is now 2:35 AM in the morning
and I’m pretty sure you could shoot me in the ass with that tranquilizing shit
they give to rhinos and my freaking gums would still keep me awake. Now hey, I
don’t hate dentists, no, I’m not a religious man, but I’ve always liked that
one line, blame the sin, forgive the sinner, Or something like that (once
again, 2:35 in the FUCKING morning). But let’s all just admit it- dentists may,
quite possibly be, the most loathsome form of doctor out there. It’s hard to
explain, but let’s just compare and contrast shall we: with regular doctors,
when you go to see them, whether voluntarily, like for a checkup, or
involuntarily, like when you’ve just been stabbed by a homeless junkie because
you couldn’t fork over the money so he could get at his crack rock, you’re
going to them so that you can hopefully live longer. When you go to the
dentist, it’s almost always voluntary, that is to say, I’ve never heard of
anybody being emergency airlifted to the nearest dental practice for an extreme
toothache.
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| Apparently Obama's Healthcare plan doesn't cover it. |
And when you do go, you’re not going so you can live longer, you’re
going because either something hurts, and you just kinda want it to stop, or
because the dentist says there’s something wrong, and that’s that. And that’s
when you get to the root of the problem- with a real doctor, you’re willing to
undergo a serious, painful operation, because you know that it will allow you
to live that much longer, and if the doctor fails, then at least you died knowing
that the death was inevitable anyway. With a dentist, if you’re not already in
an assload of pain, than the invitation of going through an even bigger assload
of pain simply because it might help make you feel better, is kind of a shitty
deal. Plus, if the dentist should fail in his/her operation, then you get to
die knowing that you died because you couldn’t take a bit of a sore ache, like
a bitch.
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| "It just got so hard to eat Doritos though!" |
And yet it’s that inherent bitch-dom in all humans that keeps the art
of dentistry alive, and admittedly, however much it may suck to feel like this
right now, I know that what I’m feeling is sum total of hundreds of years
scientific labor to figure out exactly what the fuck is wrong with my mouth
(besides the fact that language- wise it’s filthier than a fucking sailor), and
how that can be remedied. As Kahlil Gibran puts it, “Your pain is the breaking
of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which
the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician and
drink his remedy in silence and tranquility” I am 100% certain that he was not
talking about dentistry of course; but still, I feel it applies pretty well to
the circumstances. And speaking of pain, how about those Egyptians, huh?
Because as we all know, while the Egyptians were hardcore badasses that had
less fucks to give than they had sand up their individual ass-cracks, they were
also extremely classy, and kind of cared about how they looked (hence the very
manly mascara, and skirts), so of course they created the medical profession
that works around the facial feature people apparently notice the most
(according to this brochure I am holding for Invisalign), dentistry.
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| I don't know, that big red dodgeball over the one dude's head is drawing my eye. |
Now
remember, I am saying they invented it, but only because they were the first to
really record their dental operations, using papyrus scrolls. It would be
foolish to say that prehistoric man didn’t take a little time out of the day
every now and again to go poking around his mouth, chances are you yourself
have done so at least once or twice as well, just as it is quite possible that
in all that poking around, with rocks, and sticks (and other things of that
incredibly unsafe sort) something that could be considered a dental operation
didn’t go on way back when. Also we can totally prove that something considered
a dental operation happened way back when, because we live in the 21st century,
and Egyptian dentistry happened a looong time after prehistoric man started
setting up culture you fool. We’ve actually uncovered evidence that people were
allowing their friends to use a stone to drill into their teeth as far back as
9,000 years ago, with some pretty perfectly preserved teeth dating back from
5500 BC proving that such dental practice was going on with live patients.
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| The Frat Pledge: The only other person to let something like that happen to him in 9,000 years. |
Don’t let all these big, smart, intelligent words fool you though, you didn’t
have cavemen calmly lying in the doctor’s chair, waiting for the dentist to
show himself in, and, with the aid of a nurse, begin the tactful operation,
calmly, and smoothly, and peacefully and shit, the whole thing probably looked
more like a bunch of guys crowding around another dude, inventing the art of
the beat-down, not dentistry. The process theoretically used, is that the
dentist would take a sharp pointy flint tip, and then using a kind of bow tool,
like they would use to build fires with, would start spinning the flint around,
back and forth, drilling it into the teeth- the worst part being that shit like
this was done without those chill-pill type drugs the doctors use today. Because
of this, the ‘Nurses’ on hand weren’t the, “Here’s you scalpel Mr. Doctor,”
type nurses, they were there for the purpose of holding down the patient’s arms
and legs, since many patients were known to flail during the experience, as
people who are having a sharp stone slowly stabbed into the nerve center of
their respective teeth are wont to do.
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| "Huh. The thing we use to create fire on wood also create pain on people. Interesting." |
Not only that, but it is also theorized
that the same ancient people who were dumb enough to think dentistry meant
jabbing rocks into someone’s mouth, were also the same people dumb enough to do
this shit so THEY COULD LOOK GOOD. The idea is, is that cavemen, being so
infatuated with shiny beads and such, would try to take the whole beading thing
to the next level, by inserting beads into their goddamn teeth, an idea that
most likely sprang into their heads because their teeth, already being so
shitty, were full of holes, and probably seemed like an inventing place to put
beads anyway. Either that or they were hoping to alleviate tooth pain by
releasing evil spirits.
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| Evil spirits like tooth decay, that is. |
Y’know, whichever’s crazier (and trust me- shit got
crazier). Now I don’t know which side created it, the dentists or the patients,
but somewhere along the line, some dude just got fed up, and decided he didn’t
really like the idea of having his ailments treated by a guy who didn’t know
what was causing them in the first place, and couldn’t explain how the fuck his
‘treatment’ was supposed to help. And so was born the myth of- THE TOOTH WORM.
The idea of the tooth worm is this- people’s teeth were full of holes, right?
Well, what other animal makes holes? That’s right! Worms
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| Okay, the worm thing I can buy, but little men mining the inside of my tooth is stretching it a bit. |
True, the myth
that you swallow like a hundred spiders in your sleep may be complete bullcrap now,
but back then, all kinds of spiders and fly and bugs were crawling in people’s
mouths, whether they were asleep or awake. The world was dirtier than a
hipster’s ironic beard back then. How dirty, you might be asking? Well it was
so dirty in fact, that the idea that the place one inhabits is so filthy, that
a large number of bugs could periodically waltz in and just horse around in
one’s mouth, lasted all around the globe, from when it was thought up in 5000
BC, until the freaking 1300s, when a famous French surgeon said it was totally,
without a doubt, true, and the absolute reason as to why we have tooth decay.
This theory was apparently good enough for people, and so they continued to go
to their local dentist, who kept on with the whole ‘drilling’ thing until the
Middle Ages began, when everybody attempting the craft everywhere just threw up
their hands and said “Fuck it, I’ll be a farmer.” After that, getting treated
for a toothache either meant chugging down some five dollar mystery elixir from
a suspicious mustachioed salesman, or just kind of ripping the tooth out
completely and rubbing some dirt in the hole.
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| Because fuck cavities. |
Since dentistry was never even
considered a medical subject at the time (it was just pulling teeth, you don’t
call the tech guy on the phone the next ‘Steve Jobs’ just because he
patronizingly knows you’re supposed to unplug the computer and then plug it
back in again five minutes later), dentists didn’t even really exist, instead,
the capitalistic market took care of everything, with barbers offering to take
care of your tooth problem for you right along with your next shave. The market
evolved more and more, until you actually just had shops dedicated towards
ripping out peoples teeth, and then selling them to other people, as
replacements (or, if the buyer was really twisted, jewelry).
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| For some people they're the same thing. |
Now, tell me which
is worse- someone taking a sharp stone and drilling holes into your teeth,
slowly, and roughly, or someone taking a rudimentary prong-like metal tool, and
using it to tear your individual teeth out by their roots- all this, once again,
without any help from drugs (they didn’t even have the decency to at least hit
you on the head and knock you out). The tool described is called the Pelican,
and if it sounds like the product of an insane, unsupervised madman, then
you’re not too far away from the truth, as it was invented by Guy de Chauliac,
the exact same French boner-part (see what I did there) who thought that worms
were living in peoples teeth.
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| He looks a little something like this. |
The tools evolved even more, leading to the
creation of the dental key in the 1700’s, which was kind of like that tool
people use to open the cork on bottles of champagne, except the cork was your
tooth (which would make the champagne your blood…? [I apologize to those
readers with a weaker heart, and don’t like to see, let alone hear about blood,
but, in my defense, maybe you should just grab your wallet, go down to the
store, and pick up a set of balls you pansy]). This kind of shit, which could
actually be considered torture by modern standards, finally started to go out
the window in the 17- 1800s, when an extremely classy Frenchman showed up,
physician Pierre Fauchard, who has been called the father of modern dentistry,
due to his numerous contributions to, and overall development of, the oral
science we still kind of hate today. He wrote several books on the subject,
some of his most famous accomplishments being his introduction of dental
fillings to the very short itinerary of possible dental operations, he also
figured out that no, there is no such thing as a worm that lives in teeth, and
that dental decay is in fact caused by the secret bad-ass, sugar, which while
it may seem nice, and sweet, and harmless, actually has the effect of burning
through your teeth like hydrochloric acid.
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| Sweet tooth, bro (Get it?). |
While his advancements went far and
wide in Europe, they didn’t really carry over so much to England, but, in a
way, did have a big impact on America, as his creation of prosthetic teeth is
the reason our first President was able to have a set of chompers made of some
gnarley (see what I did there AGAIN) wood. Not really, actually the creation of
tooth prosthetics just gave old people with bare gums something that could let
them actually chew their hotdogs, instead of just dipping them in water and
sliding them down the gullet. Dentistry has come a very long way since then, as
I myself am proof of (what with my lack of wisdom teeth, and lower braces, and
several fillings and whatnot. My mouth is like a patchwork of dental mishaps),
but dentistry is still far from perfect, as I, and the bottle of Advil I
crushed in less than a week, also prove. But focus on what I said earlier
though- about ancient people’s teeth being supremely crappy (along with some of
their hair-brained ideas), this fact is important and dare I say it, integral
even, to your further education into this marvelous world of oral hygiene. You
see, crappy teeth by today’s standards, as compared to way back when, are
actually pretty good.
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| Back then, you wouldn't chew these if you forgot to brush, you'd chew these instead of brushing. |
That smoker friend of yours, whose teeth are always
yellow, and nasty, would look like a fucking Crest toothpaste advertisement
back when living in a mud-hut made you the 1% of your tribe. Those
‘historically accurate’ movies you watch could get everything right, but I
promise you, not a single goddamn one of them will get the teeth right, and you
know why? Because that would require the movie studio to knock out three or
four of Russell Crowe’s teeth, and make the rest look like Swiss cheese, so
unless they proposed the possibility to him in a bar, with a corded telephone
nearby, I don’t think it’d happen.
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| It's his eyes! I can't tell if he's angry, or he's going to break out in tears! |
The point being, teeth were to our ancestors
what social media sites (facebook, twitter, etc.) are to those of us living in
a first-world country, a necessary tool for life, but still something that
makes us feel shitty every time we use it. But as long as we have dentists
there, to make us feel just a little shittier, so we can feel legitimately
awesome afterwards, we’ll be alright. Oh, and for those of whom who are
wondering why I didn’t give Thanksgiving that big of a hullabaloo as I did
Halloween, it’s because:
A: Halloween is an actual fucking
Holiday, Thanksgiving is something those assholes who killed all the Native
Americans off had like, every other week, and we in the present just reworked
to excuse one day of unabashed gluttony- you know what? Cracked says it best
right here.
B: A month ago you celebrated a
Holiday by stuffing your mouths with chocolate bars, and now you’re celebrating
another one by stuffing your mouths with turkey, shit, just be happy this isn’t
the History of Weight Watchers you chubby- I MEAN- trim and good looking people
who will continue to read my essays and share some with your friends, ha ha ha…
please?
Anyway, I’m going back to nursing
my aching gums, and appreciating the fact that at least I, unlike my
unfortunate Irish ancestors before me, have sweet, soothing (as I like to call
it) Oxicotton, to drive those bad times away. Legally. Goodnight folks.
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| I think this picture just about sums up my essay perfectly. |
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