“I told him nothing about what was being attempted with the bands, so he wasn’t ‘hypnotized.’ After we saw results, however, I instructed him to apply the bands every half hour if the pain continued, and as it decreased to lengthen the interval of the applications. “When next I saw him, several days after, he laughingly said, ‘Oh, I apply the rubbers once a day now, as I don’t want that pain to come back.’ He is now enjoying life better than he has for years, thanks to ‘those fool rubber bands,’ as his daughter called them.” Many dentists secure a very satisfactory degree of analgesia--sufficient for excavating or treatments--by compressing firmly the lip or cheek immediately over the tooth that is to be worked upon. (See Fig. 27.) But as a rule, for extraction purposes, they prefer pressure over the roots, or directly upon the various branches of the dental nerves. (See Figs. 25 and 26.) [Illustration: FIG. 27--Patient anesthetizing the left jaws in the first zone, by firmly pressing the lip directly opposite, between the thumb and index finger of left hand, indicating the area with the right index finger.] [Illustration: FIG. 28--Stickpin firmly imbedded in a section of the anesthetized area shown in Fig. 27.] One of the most significant facts in connection with zone therapy is the intimate relation between morbid dental conditions and pain or even pathological changes in practically every section of the body. It has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt, that points--or foci--of infection within the mouth, or in the teeth, frequently manifest disturbances most remote from their point of origin. This is one reason why many physicians and surgeons, using the method, make a routine practice of sending every patient, in whom dental disease is even suspected, for a thorough overhauling by a competent dentist. Another reason for striving to keep all our original teeth in their places is that nature intended to preserve the continuity--if it may be so termed--of our various nerve zones. Sound, healthy teeth and roots in their normal occlusion, seem to assist in the normal functioning of the entire zone chain of which they are important links. Asthma, congestions, headaches, neuralgia, conditions affecting the nerves of the head or the ears, or even partial deafness, have been materially improved, and many times completely cured, by the application of a galvanic cautery around the necks of the teeth, by pressure on the teeth themselves in the zone affected, or even by having the patient “grind” the particular teeth related to those areas which it is attempted favorably to influence.