Put a Frog in Your Mouth: Toothache 'Cures' from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Ireland

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, toothache must have been a common complaint in Ireland, to judge from the number of toothache 'cures' reported as part of The Schools' Collection (SC) or 'Bailiúchán na Scol', a folklore-collecting scheme that was undertaken in the Irish Republic in 1937 and 1938, and upon which this article is based. These cures range from quasi-medical treatments, such as packing the affected tooth with tobacco, to more folkloric, or magico-religious cures, such as licking a frog or pulling out a tooth from a corpse, as well as herbal and mineral remedies.