10/09/2026
âPAINLESS DENTISTâ⌠meanwhile this kid is writing LIAR on the wall!!! Honestly, he may have had a point.
Dental anesthesia had come a long way by the 1920s: nitrous oxide had been demonstrated for dental procedures in the 1840s, ether and other inhaled anesthetics were also used historically, and procaine (Novocain) was introduced in the early 1900s as a local anesthetic. But dentistry back then was obviously VERY different from what we have today â anesthetic drugs, injection techniques, monitoring, equipment, and safety standards have all evolved tremendously. And not all offices used them at all!
ALSOOOO my personal story: My grandma told me stories about being given something to breathe from a cloth during dental treatment, being put out, waking up, and then being given more đł I obviously canât know exactly what medication she received, but inhaled general anesthetics such as ether and chloroform were historically used in medicine and dentistry.
So no, people in the 1920s werenât necessarily getting dental work with ZERO anesthesia⌠but compared with modern local anesthetics and todayâs safety standards?
Yeahhh⌠I understand why this little guy was skeptical of the word âpainless.â
BTW! Novocain isnât what dentists use today. Modern dentistry more commonly uses anesthetics such as lidocaine and articaine!
