Before numbing was invented, dentists used arsenic trioxide to kill tooth nerves so they could extract them without pain. The toxic substance was standard practice until the mid-20th century, when regulators finally banned it from dental use.
What about the older materials? This was something I was really floored about as I was doing some background on these specific materials. You're gonna be surprised at how recently these materials were not outlawed, but taken off the recommended list by the organization. Sometimes the concern's not the procedure, it's what's used to be inside the tooth. That's a fair question, and here's the honest answer. What was used decades ago is not used today, thank goodness. The 2 come up, 2 that come up the most often. I want to show you this arsenic trioxide. Now, imagine we're putting arsenic on a live structure in your, in your tooth. They numb it, they open it up. The tooth is alive. We devitalize the nerve by putting arsenic on it. And that's when local anesthesia did not exist. This is fading from Western practice about middle of the 20th century.
