Bite the bullet Accept the inevitable impending hardship and
endure the resulting pain with fortitude. I've always believed
that, before the days of effective anaesthetics, soldiers were
given bullets to bite on to help them endure pain. 'I've always
believed' has to be as poor an opening gambit as 'it is widely
accepted' or 'a man in a pub told me' on a piece discussing the
origins of a phrase. Is it true or is it just 'believed'? The
theory goes that patients undergoing surgery would be given a
stick of wood or a pad of leather to bite on in order to
concentrate their attention away from the pain and also to
protect against biting their own tongues. A bullet, being
somewhat malleable and not likely to break the patient's teeth,
is said to have been an impromptu battlefield alternative. Lead
poisoning would probably have been a secondary concern in those
circumstances. An ingenious correspondent has suggested that, as
wooden sticks are known as billets, the stick-biting practice
might have first been called