Home Remedies For Toothache Pain - No More Painkiller

The cure for toothache is to take some painkillers, gargle with salty warm water and make an appointment to see the dentist as soon as possible. The following temporary remedy from Mr W, K. Ayres of Canterbury recalls the time when people were unable to afford to see the dentist and had no alternative other than to treat themselves.

'We lived in a small village seven miles from Dover. My father was a farmer renting his land. In those days there were no subsidies and he had two successive bad years. The first was a drought — some idiot of a boy set fire to a barn full of corn. By the time the horse-drawn fire brigade from a village two and a half miles away arrived there was nothing left. By direct contrast, in the summer of the next year we had a cloudburst over the village. So you can see we were not very well off and if we had toothache there was no chance of a visit to the dentist.

'My mother filled a large saucer with vinegar, sprinkled a good amount of pepper on it and soaked a square brown paper on it. When it was thoroughly wet she slapped it on the cheek nearest the offending tooth and tied it with a large handkerchief. I think it helped because we always slept quite well but it didn't pay to wriggle one's face in the pillow because the vinegar had evaporated and the brown paper felt like sandpaper.'

This brown paper and vinegar, of course, features as a remedy for another ailment — Jack's headache after 'breaking his crown’ in the children's nursery rhyme Jack and Jill.