I said I believed the average man dreaded tooth-pulling more than amputation, and that he would yell quicker under the former operation than he would under the latter.

The philosopher Harris said that the average man would not yell in either case if he had an audience.

Then he continued: "When our brigade first went into camp on the Potomac, we used to be brought up standing, occasionally, by an ear-splitting howl of anguish.
That meant that a soldier was getting a tooth pulled in a tent.

But the surgeons soon changed that; they instituted open-air dentistry.

There never was a howl afterward--that is, from the man who was having the tooth pulled.