Re: Bye Bye, Life/Goodbye, Happiness/Hello Loneliness/I Think I'm

James Nicoll wrote:

>>> I've mentioned I have dentist phobias, right? My first dentist
>>> was unspeakably awful: didn't like to use pain killers, had a
>>> slow drill, tended to use tem****ary fillings if he thought he
>>> could get away with it. Thank goodness for nitrous.
>>> 
>> Huh.  I wonder if this was a prevailing attitude during a
>> particular decade.
> 
> This was in the UK in the early 1960s.
> 
> I think it had something to do with my parents' incredible ability to
> choose bad doctors. For example, when I was getting my eye checked
> two weeks ago, the student was surprised that the optometrist who
> handled my case when I was 6 hadn't bothered to do something about my
> amblyopia when I was young enough for it to matter. As it turns out,
> I know someone else treated by the same guy for the same problem who
> also didn't get an eye-patch and another person whose vision actually
> got worse after seeing this guy.

In an example of topic drift extraordinary even by the standards of 
rasfw, I'm going to add more on the topic of UK dentists in the 1960's. 
Mine was as bad as yours, but I wonder how much of it was due to the 
system rather than incompetence or sadism. One chair, one dentist, one 
receptionist. If she used anaesthetic, I was in the chair 20 minutes 
longer than if she didn't, for what was typically a 20 minute procedure. 
It would have reduced the number of patients she could see by 50%.

OTOH, she kept a copy of _Little Black Sambo_ in the waiting room, which 
was probably unforgivable.

Mark