While at Ambervale, to escape the "oppression of boredom," he walked
over the hills to Chesterfield and found a dentist: "I described to
him the symptoms, which I knew well, of an abscess. He tapped a
perfectly good tooth with his little mirror and I reacted in the
correct way. 'Better have it out,' he advised. 'Yes, I said, 'but
with ether.' A few minutes' unconsciousness was like a holiday
form the world. I had lost a good tooth, but the boredom was for
the time dispersed."
-- Graham Greene quoted in The Life of Graham Greene by
Norman Sherry