Medieval torture devices that, well, save lives!

There’s no name to give, no confession to extract. 

A dental office, famous for having the most cutting-edge torturing devices, might be the most common scene that evokes nightmares. Walking into a dental office is pretty much the same as walking into an execution chamber. I recalled my first experience of receiving treatment; I was dragged into a giant spinning radiation machine, and the buzzing noise sounded like that radiation beam had penetrated every single cell and gene in my body and broken them down into even finer molecular pieces.  

After taking the X-rays, I was told to sit on the treatment chair, which looked the same as an interrogating chair with those shinning torturing devices prominently displayed right next to my shoulder. The dentist, behind a surgical mask, looked like a medieval executioner, put a metal hook at the corner of my mouth. At the moment, I thought I was a hooked fish, frightened, despaired but unable to struggle freely like a fish; an unnecessary struggle could lead to a permanent scar on my face. Later, a metal pin touched one of my teeth’s surface; then, an increasing stream of electric flow ran through my body. “Raise your hand when you feel discomfort,” said the dentist softly but with a tone of indifference.  

However, I didn’t feel anything, and I thought it meant that I had no problems with my teeth. “The nerve is dead; you, have to do a root canal,” he announced the death of my tooth with emotionless eyes. His voice was metallic and robotic. Before I could react, a needle pierced into my gums, like injecting deadly poison to make my tooth completely lifeless. Then my tooth was clamped as if it was secured by a pillory and soon to be placed on the guillotine. Rather than a giant blade hanging above me, I saw a sharp whirring drill slowly approach my mouth, with the swooshing sound of the shrieking motor spinning at over 400,000 RPM. As it entered my mouth, I could only hear my enamel scream; there, he drilled a large hole in it—I felt it. After which the executioner used files to hollow out the tissues inside.  

Behind the dentist’s eyes, I could not recognize if this person was the same guy who had kindly greeted me at the front desk when I first walked into the clinic. There was something murderous about his eyes. He had turned into a butcher of teeth, and nothing could stop him from drilling deeper into my ill-fated tooth. “Beep…beep…beep…beeeeeeeeeep!” This was the first time I noticed this small device making a sound. It was connected with the hook on the corner of my mouth. It sounded like a vital sign monitoring machine, which I picked up as the sound of one person’s life just ended in a second. “What does that mean? Am I alive?” I had no idea. “This small device helps me to measure the length of a root canal, so I can know how deep I need to clean; and that beeping sound means that the treatment is progressing smoothly,” he explained like he was reading from a script, and continued to perform his job with the same expressionless face.  

A few minutes later, the executioner took away the clamp and set my tooth free from the guillotine. He said, “Ok, we are done for today’s treatment! Please, Mr. Huang, you can make an appointment at the front desk; my colleague will help you.” A shining smile came back on his face, and I could tell total relief from him under his mask. “This meant that my treatment went very well, right?” I asked. The dentist only gave me a friendly but practiced smile and waved me goodbye. I took a quick glance back at the tray next to the surgical chair, I thought those tools and devices, though intimidating at first glance, were actually precise instruments of healing rather than torture. Each one had its specific purpose in restoring dental health, and in skilled hands; they were more like surgical tools in an operating room than medieval torture devices. I felt a newfound respect for these modern medical equipments. I had learned so much from this dental experience that, as the adage goes, “One is bound for good fortune after surviving a great disaster.”  

My toothache totally disappeared after the anesthesia had worn off. Also, I learned that we cannot judge a book by its cover. The torturing devices may look horrifying, but they can save our lives! Thank God, I can now eat ice cream again! 

Shawn Huang is a dentist by profession who has discovered a sharp wit and a passion for satire. His writing humorously critiques serious medical policy issues and the often transactional nature of doctor-patient relationships in Taiwan. Follow him for clever, incisive pieces that blend professional insight with a comic twist.