There is no known way of telling in advance, just what degree of analgesia success is assured. Dr. M. W. Maloney, of Providence, R. I., and Dr. Wm. J. Hogan, of Hartford, Conn., claim successful results with about 80% of their cases. Dr. Everett M. Cook, of Toledo, Ohio, writes that he is easily successful in 75% of his cases. Dr. Thomas J. Ryan, of New York, is quite uniformly successful in desensitizing the gums for pyorrhoea treatment. While other dentists range on down to as low as 50% of successes, or even to zero. There are probably very definite reasons for this, although it may be difficult to convince the average dentist that such exist. First, it requires a fine technic to find the various dental nerves, and, by commencing gently, and gradually increasing pressures, to anesthetize them without hurting the patient more than the operation might have hurt him. In which case he has the pain of the operation plus the pain of attempting to analgesize his unresponsive nerve points. Next, when pressures are made over the fingers, especially where no clamps or rubber bands are used, there is a tendency to skimp on the time devoted to the finger squeezing. The dentist or his assistant will give the job a “lick and a promise”--and let it go at that. They don’t use sufficient time or sufficient force really to accomplish anything. And third, they won’t take the time properly to learn the zones and the teeth relations, and apply in a serious way the knowledge so acquired. However, for the benefit of those dentists who may be interested in learning how to desensitize cavities in sensitive teeth, or do some of the necessarily painful scaling of tartar and other deposits in pyorrhea, and for the particular benefit of several million of their patients throughout the country, I would say that pressure by an assistant exerted over the joints of the thumb (the assistant would do better completely to “cover” the joint, using thumbs and fingers of both hands for this purpose), will mitigate or quite control the pain in the incisor and occasionally the cuspid teeth of the side corresponding to the finger being squeezed. Never let the patient do this for himself, unless you provide him with clamps or wide rubber bands for the purpose, as he cannot be trusted to make the pressures long enough or strong enough to accomplish satisfactory results. Pressure exerted over the first or second joint of the first finger will control pain in the cuspid and bicuspid teeth. The second finger is related to the two molars, but sometimes the third (or ring) finger must also be employed for this region. In other words, pressure upon the thumb, fore-finger, middle, and ring fingers of either hand will control correspondingly pain in the incisors, cuspids and bicuspids and the two molars on either side of the median line, providing that there is no great inflammation or no abscess in the vicinity of the corresponding teeth.