Pigngger The Ceps | dreamingfordreams.com

…held a huge pair of forceps, and in the other the needle of the whirling instrument used for boring holes in teeth prior to filling them. ‘I am Paul’ he said, ‘ and it is my unpleasant task to attend to your mouth every day. I shall first of all extract your teeth, then replace them, and, lastly, fill them. It will hurt you frightfully, but you must be patient; and I shall keep on at it till you cease swearing and begin of your own accord to repeatThe Old Hundredth, when your punishment will cease, and you will find yourself on the high road to Heaven. Now!’ And here I could stop him, he thinks the forceps into my mouth and began pulling. Pain! The pain was unendurable, inconceivable! All my previous sufferings were as nothing to it. And with the extraction of each tooth it increased. At last…

…they died away altogether; and again there was a sudden blank, followed by an excruciating pain, in which I seemed to feel the entire upper part of my head slowly wrenched away from the lower. Youth undoubtedly magnifies all things joys and sorrows and pains; and in our after-life we do not feel things so acutely as we did in our childhood. The torture of the rack, I am sure, was as nothing compared with the torture I endured in my sleep under those forceps; and then blessed relief! The diabolical cause of my suffering flew out, and the vague unearthly hum of voices grew louder and louder, till they finally became recognisable human accents; when, as I had actually done under the anaesthetic, I awoke. But it was all real cruelly, wickedly real; and it was due, I have no doubt, to the overtired condition…