Page:Wonderful adventures of sixteen British seamen.pdf/20

 raged, as if torments were its delight. In all my reading, I never met with any author but Burns who had a proper idea of thothe [sic] toothache. He wished his enemies to have it for a twelvemonth. Oh dear! He must be more or less than a man who could endure this. He must despair and perish.

How true it is, that out of evil often some good will spring; for while I was enduring this thumbscrew on my gums—this gout in my jaw—this rack of my nerve—this destroyer of brains-amid this desolation I acquired much useful information respecting the toothache. One friend informed me that half the suffering was occasioned by nervous irritability; for, if I went to a dentist with a determination to have the tooth extracted, the moment I entered the door the tooth would cease to give me pain. He had proved it more than once.

Another friend smiled at my deplorable situation, and laughed at my desire to retain in my mouth such a thing, that had ceased to be a tooth; it was a mere stump, with a carious fang; worse than useless; it was positively injurious. If the case were his, he should give such a tenant immediate notice to quit. With a pair of pincers he would serve the ejectment himself, as an empty house was preferable to a bad tenant.

Another friend requested me to be careful in selecting an operator on my tooth, for that he went to a dentist oncoonce [sic], under anguish scarcely endurable, to have a largolarge [sic] doublodouble [sic] tooth like mine extracted. He seated himself in a chair, and was told to hold fast by the frame-work of the seat, to proventprevent [sic] being hoisted up by the lever-power in the hands of thothe [sic] operator. All was properly arranged,