p. 349 | An Elephant’s Toothache

Signs Publishing Co. · Melbourne, Victoria · May 31, 1920

FromAustraliasian Signs of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 22.

An Elephant’s Toothache

JULIE is one of the huge pachyderms that perform daily for the edification of the audiences at New York’s Hippodrome. Some time ago Julie went down with the toothache. The management was at first inclined to let the offending molar take the natural course; but Julie was so perturbed about it that this was out of the question. For weeks she made day and night hideous with her cries: and when at length in her frenzied rocking she began to threaten the safety of the floor, it was found necessary to do something about the tooth. Filling an elephant’s tooth, however, is not a job for the ordinary tooth-doctor; it resembles rather the operation with concrete and steel bars upon a big tree. The animal dentist who was called in to deal with Julie’s affliction found that her cavity would require fourteen ounces of filling! A photograph in the Scientific American shows the process of driving the filling home, and makes it clear that a crowbar is an essential feature of the zoologist’s dental equipment.