Flashback Friday: Favorite Ways to Ease the Pain of a Toothache

Toothache Remedies to be Taken with a Grain of Salt

The Simple but Disgusting Methods

• Eat grasshopper eggs.
• Place fresh cow manure on the side of the face where the ache occurs.
• Hold a live frog against the aching cheek.
• Apply a crushed ladybug to the aching tooth.
• Never wash on a Tuesday.

The Weird and Complicated Methods

• Take the tooth of a murdered man or, better still, an executed criminal and apply it to the aching tooth in a graveyard at midnight under a full Moon.
• On Good Friday, comb your hair and collect the hair that falls out. Burn it and inhale the fumes.
• Pick your teeth with the nail of the middle toe of an owl.

Better to Have the Toothache

• Eat the eyes of a vulture.
• Bite off the head of a live mouse, put it in a bag, and suspend it from your neck. The ribbon or thread must not have a knot in it.
• Press the finger of a corpse against the aching tooth.
• If all else fails, an ancient Chinese physician recommended a pill of arsenic, which the patient should “put close to aching tooth, then sleep. Cure certain.” And final.