While suffering from this attack, I had a visit from another friend of the same class with Mrs. A--. She was a kind, good-natured soul, and would watch by your sick-bed untiringly, night after night, and do it with real pleasure. But she had, like Mrs. A--, a very thoughtless habit of relating the many direful afflictions and scenes of human suffering it had been her lot to witness and hear of, unconscious that she often did great harm thereby, particularly when these things were done, as was too often the case, _apropos_. "You are not well," she said, when she came in and saw the expression of pain in my face. "What is the matter?" "Nothing more than a very troublesome tooth-ache," I replied. "Use a little kreosote," said she. "I would; but the tooth is sound." "A sound tooth, is it?" My visitor's tone and look made my heart beat quicker. "Yes, it is perfectly sound." "I am always afraid of an aching tooth that is perfectly sound, since poor Mrs. P--had such a time with her jaw." "What was that?" I asked, feeling instantly alarmed. "Which tooth is it that aches?" my friend asked. I pointed it out. "The very same one that troubled Mrs. P--for several months, night and day." "Was the pain low and throbbing?" I eagerly asked. "Yes; that was exactly the kind of pain she had." "And did it continue so long as several months?" "Oh, yes. But that wasn't the worst! the aching was caused by the formation of an abscess." "A what?" A cold chill passed over me. "An abscess." "At the root of her tooth?" "Yes. But that wasn't so bad as its consequences; the abscess caused the bone to decay, and produced what the doctors called a disease of the antrum, which extended until the bone was eaten clear through, so that the abscess discharged itself by the nostrils." "Oh, horrible!" I exclaimed, feeling as sick as death, while the pain in my tooth was increased fourfold. "How long did you say this abscess was in forming?" "Some months." "Did she have an operation performed?" I have a terrible fear of operations. "Oh, yes. It was the only thing that saved her life. They scraped all the flesh away on one cheek and then cut a hole through the bone. This was after the tooth had been drawn, in doing which the jaw-bone was broken dreadfully. It was months before it healed, or before she could eat with any thing but a spoon." This completely unmanned, or, rather, unwomanned me. I asked no more questions, although my visitor continued to give me a good deal of minute information on the subject of abscesses, and the dreadful consequences that too frequently attended them. After she left another friend called, to whom I mentioned the fact of having a very bad tooth-ache, and asked her if she had ever known any one to have an abscess at the root of a sound tooth. She replied that tooth-ache from that cause was not unfrequent, and that, sometimes, very bad consequences resulted from it. She advised me, by all means, to have the tooth extracted.