DRAWING TEETH UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE LETHEON.—Miss Margaret Fuller, the Paris correspondent of the New York Tribune, writes in her last letter that she has had a tooth extracted in that city after inhaling the Letheon, and she gives a graphic description of her sensations during the operation. As many ladies, suffering with the tooth-ache, desire to have the disordered tooth pulled, but are afraid to employ the Letheon, we copy Miss Fuller’s description in full that they may fully realize all the facts. She writes:
“After suffering several days very much with the tooth-ache, I resolved to get rid of the cause of sorrow by the aid of the ether, not sorry, either, to try its efficacy, after all the marvelous stories I had heard. The first time I inhaled it, I did not for several seconds feel the effect, and was just thinking, ‘Alas! this has not power to soothe nerves so irritable as mine,’ when suddenly I wandered off, I didn’t know where, but it was a sensation like wandering in long garden walks, and through many alleys of trees, many impressions, but all pleasant and serene. The moment the tube was removed, I started into consciousness, and put my hand to my cheek, but, sad! The throbbing tooth was still there. The dentist said I had not seemed to him insensible. He then gave me the ether in a stronger dose, and this time I quitted the body instantly, and cannot remember any detail of what I saw and did, but the impression was as in the Oriental tale, where the man has head in the water an instant only, but in his vision a thousand years seemed to have passed. I experienced that same sense of an immense length of time and succession of impressions; even now, the moment my mind was in that state seems to a far longer period in time than my life on earth does as I look back upon it. Suddenly I seemed to see the old dentist as I had for the moment before I inhaled the gas, amid his plants, in his night-cap and dressing-gown; in the twilight the figure had somewhat of a Faust-like, magical air, and he seemed to say, ‘C’est inutile.’ Again I started up, fancying that once more he had not dared to extract the tooth, but it was gone. What is worth noticing is the mental translation I made of his words, which my ear must have caught; for my companion tells me he said, ‘C’est le moment,’ a phrase of just as many syllables, but conveying just the opposite sense.
“However, there is no evading the heavier part of these miseries. You escape the effort of screwing up your courage to one of these moments, and escape the moment of suffering, but not the jar to the whole system. I found the effect of having taken the ether bad for me. I seemed to taste it all the time, and neuralgic pain continued; this last three days yet.
“Virtues of the Letheon.” Daily Union, 6 April 1847, pp. 2.
