The Village Tooth-Puller

I went to see the dentist yesterday and we got chatting about dentistry in the past, all of which reminded me of our village tooth-puller. In the 1940s I lived in a village in Warwickshire. My grandparents lived with us, and granddad got a toothache. So of course the village tooth-puller was called. You couldn't call him a dentist, he wasn't qualified in any way ! Granddad had half a bottle of brandy and then had the tooth yanked out. I didn't witness any of the extraction. All I know is that the poor old man bled profusely and had to go to bed in our attic where no-one could see what had happened (don't ask me why !). Dad made him drink port, which was thought to replace the blood he had lost ! He got better eventually. Life was different in those days !

We also had a village pig-killer, but that's another story - he only had one arm.