A treadle operated dental drill seems just the job for Net Zero dentistry. No electricity and no problems with intermittent power. Just carry on pounding that treadle is the message here. I'm sure it's what sustainability fans have been waiting for.
To my mind, the kudos of trying it out should first go to BBC environment journalists. The Beeb could make a whole programme about it, drawing lots for who gets to be first in the chair.
I'd certainly watch.
7 comments:
I hope 'Just Stop Oil' win out, I can't wait to get back to the 18th Century! All that elaborate courtship and egg & dart in all the rooms. We will have to use coal, as they did then, to produce iron for the dentist drills and all the other useful things like blunderbuses, but it will be Eutopia as it was in Britain before. Twenty seven hour coach ride from Ludlow to London anyone?
They were still using a device like that at a dentist I visited in the early 1970s in Manchester. It was painless, if primitive by today's standards and I and my teeth are still around to tell the tale!
Waif
Tammly - and today, who would wish to go from Ludlow to London?
Waif - interesting, I'm sure I've seen one in a dental surgery long ago, but can't remember where.
When first I went to dentist the drill was powered by an electric motor, can't remember where the motor was. It was foot pedal speed controlled and the drive to the drill head was done by string, high tech string of coarse, passing round three or four pulleys on articulated axes to a pulley wheel on the drill head.
It looked as elegant as early sheep shearing gear.
For the patient it was fine, but must have been awkward for the dentist to manipulate the articulated arms carrying the pulley wheels.
The drill turned at a slower speed than today's air turbine driven things, which made it feel rougher.
Doonhamer - that rings a bell. I seem to remember that early drilling created more of a grinding aroma too.
I'm in the middle week of a fortnight's dental work... It's only a crown, and nothing desperate, but when my dentist asked me if I wanted an injection or not, I easily decided not to have one, as in the early days, we never had such luxuries, and always the shrieks of pain were forgotten afew minutes later!
We used to live right opposite our dentist's surgery in later years, and in the summer, he kept the windows open for us all to hear the whine of the drill, as well as the screams and yelps...
Scrobs - today the shrieks of pain could end up on social media.
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