Fig. 29—A prominent Connecticut dentist anesthetizes the entire left half of his body through pressure on left inferior dental nerve. See following cut.
Fig. 30—We might have covered the left side of the body with stick-pins without his knowledge, as far as pain was concerned, during the period of fifteen minutes of anesthesia which followed his pressure of one minute with the finger on the left inferior dental nerve. Note the stick-pins in ear, finger and leg.
Occasionally it happens that a patient will go to a physician who uses zone analgesia to be prepared for the services of a dentist who doesn’t. Only recently a man suffering from indigestion and rheumatoid arthritis (rheumatism of the joints with progressive stiffening) was advised by his physician to have his teeth removed, the doctor insisting that because four wisdom teeth were the only teeth he had that were not decayed and completely broken down, nothing else would cure his indigestion and rheumatism.
His heart action was such that it would have been dangerous to administer cocaine—much less a general anesthetic.
Therefore, for the removal of his 27 teeth and stumps, the pressure method was decided upon. His physician accompanied him to the dentist, and doctor and dentist, for the next twenty minutes made the proper pressures on the fingers and on the inferior dental nerves.
All the lower teeth were then removed—without a particle of pain. Pressures were then repeated on the fingers and the palatine nerves, and the teeth in the upper jaw were likewise removed.
Of the entire 27, only two gave much pain on extraction, and these were most strongly attached to the bony processes (the sockets and attachments by which teeth are held in place). Bleeding following this wholesale extraction was very slight.