The Excruciating History of Dentistry by James Wynbrandt

Author:James Wynbrandt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466890145
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Drill Instructors

THE FIGHT AGAINST the Crawcours and the attacks on empirics and charlatans was part of a larger effort aimed at bringing accreditation and regulation to the profession, presaging the reform movements that would later sweep many social, business, and government institutions. The longer action was delayed, the greater the signs a thorough cleaning was needed.

Among the loudest voices for educational reform belonged to esteemed dentists Chapin A. Harris and Horace Hayden. Harris authored America’s first professional dental book, The Dental Art: a Practical Treatise on Dental Surgery, published in 1839. This has been labeled the “birth year of organized dentistry” in some quarters, for the number of firsts it witnessed. In addition to Harris’s book, the charter for the world’s first dental college, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, was granted, which Harris and Hayden founded. Additionally the first dental journal, American Journal of Dental Science—edited by Harris—appeared. And in one more landmark event, the aforementioned American Society of Dental Surgeons, a pioneering organization, was established.

Of all these events, the founding of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, the world’s first dental college, which opened in 1840, was by far the most revolutionary. It ushered in the era of formal dental education and the development of modern dental techniques and training that would make the United States the world leader in dentistry.

The dental business was booming, the growing commerce and commercialism reflected in the ever larger number and variety of dental instruments. Traditional small dental cases were no longer sufficient to hold them. Soon wooden boxes were being jerry-rigged into service, outfitted to hold all the tools of the trade. John D. Chevalier invented what is considered the first practical dental instrument case, a five-compartment model that gained wide popularity among mid-century dentists. To simplify one-stop shopping for this and other products, Chevalier opened the world’s first dental supply house in 1833 in New York. By 1840 Chevalier was creating exquisite, bejeweled dental instruments that were works of art as well as superb, albeit unsanitary, tools.

The first commercially manufactured dental chairs became available in about 1850, thanks to the merging of dentistry and industry engineered by Samuel Stockton White. In 1844 he opened the S. S. White Dental Mfg. Co., the world’s first dental manufacturing company, in Philadelphia. S. S. White became to dentists what Sears, Roebuck and Co. would become to rural America. Beginning with tooth molds and expanding to instruments and furniture after the Civil War, the company remained in the forefront of dental supplies worldwide well into the twentieth century.

White wanted his company to be a source of information as well as supplies. Beginning in 1847, the company published the Dental News Letter, continuing as the Dental Cosmos, a well-known journal of the era, in 1859. White’s literary legacy survives today, the result of Cosmos’s merger with the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) in 1936. Today the JADA remains the preeminent publication of American dentistry. White was also instrumental in the long legal battle

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.