Bite the bullet

The story everyone tells is that battlefield surgeons, lacking anaesthetic, gave wounded soldiers a bullet to clench between their teeth during amputations. It's vivid, but there's essentially no historical evidence for it: surgical accounts from the era describe leather straps or wooden gags, not bullets, and biting down on a metal bullet during surgery would risk cracking teeth for no real benefit. The earliest solid citation is Rudyard Kipling's 1891 novel The Light That Failed, used in a general sense of stoic endurance, not a specific medical scene. A related, older phrase, "chew a bullet," shows up around 1796 with a similar meaning, suggesting the image was always more figurative than literal.