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The Greeks must have had a word for it

By Clark Nida

On Sunday, consulting Wikipedia in conditions of grovelling distress, I learned a new word: pulpitis. It doesn’t evince a great understanding of classical Greek by the coiners of medical terms.

All the more surprising in view of the condition’s venerable antiquity, likewise its treatment: it is after all what stone axes were invented for.

This Monday morning, a call to my dentist in Scarborough fixed up an emergency appointment for this afternoon, bless ’em. I have yet to find a dentist in Whitby who has heard of the NHS, indeed it took many years living here before I was lucky to find the one I did. They operate an underground railway for dental trainees escaping eastern Europe for the New World – and ours is the stop where they pick up some survival English before moving on.

It is an hour’s journey to Scarborough, in a rotten antiquated unheated crowded bus, grinding up steep hills and rattling along twisty winding roads. It was an hour I made slip by with my iPod maxed, which gave scope for the rest of the bus to partake of my misery and spread the load.

The dentist could not dislodge the broken filling using the normal pick-and-shovel, so forthwith the staff crowded round my mouth, pushing in things that went sss and zzz as they cleared my head of salivary glands and drilled little holes for dynamite. When the fumes and dust cleared, the dentist had a nice hollow tooth which she could fill with mustard and put a pie crust on.

I was charged a mere £16.50 for the 20 minute operation, money which, living on the basic pension as I do, is positively tumbling out of my pockets. Money which I’d only spend on beer. As it happens, getting back to Whitby on the first bus I could – a journey I recall little of, apart from trying to curl up in the lap of an ancient farmer filling the seat like a tractor egg – I realised I was dealing with a wounded animal. The knacker’s yard being closed, I contrived a treatment which entailed the internal application of two strong beers plus fish and chips, masticated of course in the good half of my head. This cost me roughly the dental fee and was noticeably more enjoyable, though it couldn’t have been relied upon to fix the tooth. Then I dragged my old bones home through grey streets shimmering in haze and put myself to bed.

After four hours’ dreamless sleep the toothache has turned into earache, apart from which I’m fine.

When the government turns to slimming down our fat ugly health service, which anyway only caters for people like me who don’t amount to much, they might consider concentrating services like emergency dentistry in regional centres like Glasgow or Belfast. It will get us used to the idea of embracing pain for the sake of it, besides doing us all a power of good to be constantly reminded of what we once had.