My dentist in California said he had several patients from Eastern Europe and Russia who had dental treatment like this, and their teeth were all mangled from treatment without anesthesia. He had done numerous re-drilling’s and re-fillings and root canals on these patients to deal with decay in teeth that had already been treated in their home countries. They had decay underneath fillings because the original treatment had essentially only gone as deep as the patient could stand. The dentist would drill until the patient screamed stop and then fill the hole, even if that left continued decay underneath.

I can only assume that the second round of treatment in their home countries would be either another round of drill torture or tooth extraction.

Different concept. Anesthesia for an operation leads to better outcome and more comfortable for the patient. Sucicide was common in people who needed a surgery prior to the advent of anesthesia.

I had a tooth taken out without any anesthetic before. It was bad but the pain was so severe I barely remembered it even later that day. It’s almost like I remember it happening to someone else, not me.