(This post is part of my Patreon-supported New Worlds series.)
However much you dislike going to the dentist now, you’ve got it good.
Like surgery, this is a field that has benefited immeasurably from the widespread use of anaesthetic. Imagine your dentist drilling out a cavity, pulling a tooth, or draining an infected abscess with you feeling every moment of it — or better yet, don’t. (I recall once reading an account from a dentist who mentioned that some of her macho-men patients declare that they don’t need numbing . . . and then seriously regret their choices a couple of minutes in.) Dentists basically used to be torturers you avoided if at all possible.