(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.
Charm bracelets have been in fashion for decades, right up until the present day; girls (and women!) still seem to love them. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, they weren’t necessarily for girls…and they weren’t bracelets, either.
Empress
I’m plenty busy now with writing-related projects, including my own which are back-burnered for a chance to make some real money—not to disparage the importance of my own work, just sayin’. But I keep thinking about jigsaw puzzles. And relearning how to play chess. The attempt to teach cribbage to the husband got very bad reviews (from him) because I had to look up the rules all over again. I used to play this game with my grandmother and I marvel how that, as a 9-year-old, I understood them then.
