As Freud has pointed out ('Ich will nicht behaupten, dass nun die Deutung des Zahnreiztraumes als Onanietraum … voll durchsichtig geworden ist'.1) the often observed unconscious association between the ideas of toothache and masturbation is still far from being fully comprehensible, so that any contribution, however slight, on the topic may be of interest.

A vulgar English expression shews this relationship between the face and the genitals still more unequivocally, particularly in view of our idiomatic use of the word Irish to indicate the preposterous, the exact opposite to reality (and the positive is very near the negative); for British soldiers (certainly those in India) have long called an erection Irish toothache —the cure for which, particularly in the days when the saying arose, before filling teeth was widely practised, consisted in extraction.