To you who have lain long in your bed, suffering the pains of a stubborn illness whose causes medicine ignored; to you who have grieved and ached, prey to utter ignorance — and, if I may put it so here, a victim of certain obstinate men who do not believe that those hard pearls set in the mouth of every living creature can be a dangerous center, sending from their roots deadly poisons to invade the organs of the body, and above all the weak ones. This has been proven scientifically and practically, as we shall make clear in this talk. Of late the most famous physicians in various parts have awakened to the dangers of these poisons, and have advised their patients, when their cases puzzle them, to visit the clinics of dental surgeons for examination and close scrutiny and the extraction of infected teeth. Some of them have gone to extremes in their fear and wariness of these infected bases, attributing to them every disease whose causes they did not know, and pronouncing sentence that all the molars be rooted out, right or wrong; whereupon the dentist carries out those sentences without guidance and without deliberation — for the matter of extracting molars, or not extracting them, is a decision that must issue from the surgeon of teeth and mouth alone.
Imagine, then, a man who has endured excruciating pains for a long while, and at last inspiration descends upon the treating physician, and he says: no doubt there is a base sending out its poisonous germs — and if this view is correct, then the molars are responsible in the first degree, and so they must be pulled. So this poor deluded fellow arrives with this idea, from which he will not budge; and if the dentist yields to the order without careful examination, the plot between the two clinics is complete: the days pass,
the condition remains as it was, and our deluded friend goes home harboring in his soul things and more things against the two doctors. I therefore insist on saying that the operation of pulling molars must be left to the dentist, after every scientific method has been used to make certain of the focus of infection, so as to be rid of it and of the seepage of those malignant microbes by the bloodstream to the various
parts of the body, where they wreak havoc first upon the weak organs — such as the eye, the ear, the coverings of the heart and brain, and the nerves of the joints, which is what we call 'joint disease' — and others besides. Here perhaps a young man in the prime of life, enjoying good health, may ask: there has been an abscess in one of my molars for several years, and I have felt nothing. Gently, my good objector, and remember that in your body there is an immunity that shields you and wards off the evil of calamities; but when, for some reason, that latent force in your body weakens, those poisonous exhalations and malignant microbes overcome the defending forces, the dreaded thing occurs, and your mighty body becomes fertile pasture for them. We now ask: what is this circle from which those deadly poisons seep (the focus of infection)? Its seat? Its causes? Its workings?
Questions we shall answer with all brevity. There, upon the roots of molars whose nerves have been stricken — molars sinned against by certain ignorant practitioners who filled them badly and left the way open for those vermin to do their work — for this reason I affirm that the work of the dental surgeon is like the work of the surgeon of the body in point of technical sterilization and observance of the rules of modern medicine in the treatment of teeth, so that that circle, so dangerous to the general health, may not form. This is what we call abscesses at the roots of the molars: some of them find a way
It is said that the Chinese sage Confucius was walking one day with a few of his disciples at the foot of Mount Tai when he saw from afar a woman wailing over a grave. He quickened his steps toward her, and when he drew near he sent his disciple "Tzu Lu" to ask her what her affliction was. He approached her and said: You wail like one who has been stricken time after time.
She said: And what you say is true. A wild beast devoured my husband's father here. Then the calamity fell upon my husband. And now here is my son, made to drink death from the same cup.
The sage said: Then why do you not leave this place and take refuge in another?
She said: Because there is no oppressive government here.
The sage said: Remember this, my children, and keep it — oppressive governments are worse than beasts of prey.
(Bertrand Russell, in the book "Power")