YOUR HEALTH Dr James Le Fanu: 13 September
Many historical epochs can seem more alluring than our own. How wonderful to have lived in Athens in the 5th century BC with the new Parthenon sparkling in the sun, or Rome in the 16th century, home to da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. From the time of Elizabeth I onwards I’d have been happy living through virtually any era of British history – oh, to have seen the building of St Paul’s.
Such fantasies are, however, always confounded by the same conundrum – would one have been prepared to forgo the bene ts of modern dentistry? Queen Elizabeth may have been ‘The Fairie Queen’ but, throughout the winter of 1578, a contemporary historian records, she was ‘so excruciatingly tormented with toothache that forced her to pass whole nights without taking any rest’.
The prospect of extraction without anaesthesia was worse still. And so she prevaricated until the Bishop of London summoned a surgeon and had him pull one of his own decayed teeth in the Sovereign’s presence. ‘She was thereby encouraged to submit to the operation.’
It is possible, however, that the scale of dental misery in the past may have been exaggerated. Dr NW Kerr of Aberdeen University, in examining Scottish skulls from the past 2,000 years, has identi ed two distinct patterns. The rst, until the mid-18th century, is dental attrition, the wearing down of tooth enamel caused by gritty material in bread and the habit of crushing the bones of poultry and other animals in the mouth. But there was, he reports in the British Dental Journal, little evidence of tooth decay. Dental abscesses were drained easily, and teeth would be easy to extract with a good tug.
The situation changed for the worse with the Industrial Revolution: the improvement in flour re fining reduced dental attrition but the rise in sugar imports produced a ‘dramatic increase’ in gum disease and extraction ‘would have been traumatic and exceedingly painful’. This situation prevailed until 1844 when US dentist Horace Wells, following the example of the Bishop of London more than 250 years earlier, had one of his own teeth pulled – but this time painlessly under the influence of the anaesthetic nitrous oxide, which made possible modern restorative and preventative dentistry. Thus Dr Kerr concludes the horrors of dentistry in the past were perhaps not as terrible as one might think.
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of a lady from South London who has experienced ‘as long as I can remember’ a sharp pain simultaneously in the back of her right knee and left shoulder ‘as though a long needle were being pushed into each area’. These episodes occur every few months and last for a few seconds. What, she wonders, might be the explanation?
These neuralgic pains are mysterious and for them to occur simultaneously in knee and shoulder, more mysterious still. Best known perhaps is the ‘needle-in-the-eye syndrome’ described as a ‘stab of pain that feels like a needle being driven deep into the eyeball’ and lasts for a few seconds, leaving a dull ache. The cause, observes neurologist Dr John Pearce, remains unknown, while the episodic nature ‘precludes any sort of therapy’.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk
Such fantasies are, however, always confounded by the same conundrum – would one have been prepared to forgo the bene ts of modern dentistry? Queen Elizabeth may have been ‘The Fairie Queen’ but, throughout the winter of 1578, a contemporary historian records, she was ‘so excruciatingly tormented with toothache that forced her to pass whole nights without taking any rest’.
The prospect of extraction without anaesthesia was worse still. And so she prevaricated until the Bishop of London summoned a surgeon and had him pull one of his own decayed teeth in the Sovereign’s presence. ‘She was thereby encouraged to submit to the operation.’
It is possible, however, that the scale of dental misery in the past may have been exaggerated. Dr NW Kerr of Aberdeen University, in examining Scottish skulls from the past 2,000 years, has identi ed two distinct patterns. The rst, until the mid-18th century, is dental attrition, the wearing down of tooth enamel caused by gritty material in bread and the habit of crushing the bones of poultry and other animals in the mouth. But there was, he reports in the British Dental Journal, little evidence of tooth decay. Dental abscesses were drained easily, and teeth would be easy to extract with a good tug.
The situation changed for the worse with the Industrial Revolution: the improvement in flour re fining reduced dental attrition but the rise in sugar imports produced a ‘dramatic increase’ in gum disease and extraction ‘would have been traumatic and exceedingly painful’. This situation prevailed until 1844 when US dentist Horace Wells, following the example of the Bishop of London more than 250 years earlier, had one of his own teeth pulled – but this time painlessly under the influence of the anaesthetic nitrous oxide, which made possible modern restorative and preventative dentistry. Thus Dr Kerr concludes the horrors of dentistry in the past were perhaps not as terrible as one might think.
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of a lady from South London who has experienced ‘as long as I can remember’ a sharp pain simultaneously in the back of her right knee and left shoulder ‘as though a long needle were being pushed into each area’. These episodes occur every few months and last for a few seconds. What, she wonders, might be the explanation?
These neuralgic pains are mysterious and for them to occur simultaneously in knee and shoulder, more mysterious still. Best known perhaps is the ‘needle-in-the-eye syndrome’ described as a ‘stab of pain that feels like a needle being driven deep into the eyeball’ and lasts for a few seconds, leaving a dull ache. The cause, observes neurologist Dr John Pearce, remains unknown, while the episodic nature ‘precludes any sort of therapy’.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk