Dentists in Chicago

The sensitive dentist's lot is not an altogether happy one. He suffers an alternate surfeit and famine of affection. Sitting in a dentist's chair seems to make some women grow embarrassingly amorous. And, in his professional capacity, almost nobody else loves the dentist at all.

Last week in Chicago 15,000 dentists, including 770 foreigners and 450 women, assembled for the Chicago Centennial Dental Congress, planned in connection with the Fair, and the annual convention of the American Dental Association. Among the 176 subjects which engrossed them was this problem of "Why do people fear the dentist?" Any layman who had ever had a molar nerve rasped by a dentist's drill could have given them a ready answer.

But to Dr. C. W. Hagan of Pittsburgh the problem was more complex than that. He thought that children often confuse the numbness of local anesthesia with real pain, that a lifelong antipathy often springs from the child's first visit to the dentist. To avoid this he recommended that all patients under five years of age be given a general anesthetic. He also urged that adults whose fears cannot otherwise be quieted be put to sleep before undergoing a dental operation.

Dentists could dismiss this problem if all their patients were as stoical as one of Dr. Arrigo Piperno's. Dr. Piperno, who plays the violin and has four clinics in Rome, was graduated from Chicago Dental College 25 years ago. Last week, trim and handsome, his iron-gray mustache carefully waxed, he was back in Chicago to tell old & new friends about his No. 1 patient for the past eight years, Benito Mussolini.

When these words of Dr. Piperno's come to his ears-- "Questo si fara soffrire un poco" (This is going to hurt a little)-- Il Duce does not groan and stiffen his limbs. Instead he merely growls, "Non temo il dolore" (I do not fear pain).

Mussolini's teeth, all his own, are strong and healthy. To keep them so he sees his dentist every month or two. Said Dr. Piperno last week: "I call ... at eight o'clock in the morning, just after he has had his half-hour at riding or fencing. He often brings with him something to read while I am attending him. He cannot endure a moment of idleness. I say very little to him for I do not wish to disturb his thoughts. In fact, it is a very serious half-hour I spend with His Excellency."

400 Years of dental history were sketched colorfully by Yale's Physiologist Howard Wilcox Haggard, able popularizer. The first dentists were mountebanks who probably snatched purses on the side. All they knew was how to pull teeth, open gumboils. For extractions they used a fearsome instrument called "the pelican," precursor of the Stillson wrench. It always got the offending tooth usually accompanied by one on each side and one above. To keep teeth healthy the 16th Century dentist advised eating a mouse once a month, fumigating the mouth with smoke from onion seeds.

Preventive Dentistry, beginning in childhood, was the convention's keynote. Chief keynoter was Dr. Arthur Davenport Black, whitehaired & mustached dean of Northwestern University's Dental School, president of the Centennial Congress. In Chicago's Lincoln Park stands a statue of his father, Dr. Greene Vardiman Black, called the "Father of American Dentistry." At the last Chicago Centennial Dental Congress, held during the Fair of 1893, the elder Black presented dentists with their first nomenclature.

Dean Black's own methods in preventive dentistry are unique. When he reorganized the research department in Northwestern University's Dental School, he took on a metallurgist, two chemists, a pathologist, a physiologist and an anatomist. Ablest of these is pipe-smoking Pathologist Edward Howard Hatton, now the department's director, specialist in focal infection.

Last week Dr. Black, 62, declared: "Millions of teeth were pulled a generation ago. . . . Our objective today is to save these millions of teeth. . . . There has been no spectacular innovation in dentistry in the last few years, but there have been outstanding developments in our understanding of the effects of childhood care on the adult mouth. . . . With proper care starting in early childhood, before the first molars appear, there is no reason why every person should not have most of his teeth at the age of three-score-&-ten." In the past 50 years, said Dr. Black, the U. S. dental profession has spent $50,000,000 to find out the causes of tooth troubles. The next 50 years and $50,000,000 should go to preventing them.

Diet. Dr. Frederick Bogue Noyes, 60, of Chicago thought that heredity probably has more to do with tooth health than has diet. Immunity and susceptibility to dental caries (decay) have been traced through four human generations. But most dentists agreed last week that diet is of prime importance, especially in childhood. They were interested in the report of University of Chicago's Biochemist Milton Hanke on a three-year experiment at Mooseheart (Ill.) Orphanage. He found that large amounts of orange juice (at least eight ounces per day) tended to decrease tooth decay by one half. Dr. Henry Aria Honoroff reported that orphans in Chicago's Marks Nathan Home with institutional diet & care and periodic examinations, had teeth 85% healthier than those of public school children.

"A clean tooth, well nourished and well exercised [by brushing gums], can never decay," was the way Mayo Clinic's Dr. Boyd S. Gardner wanted to amend dentistry's famed slogan.

Dr. Clara M. Davis of Winnetka, Ill.. disconcerted most pediatricians with her report of an experiment in child diet. She began with 15 babies six months old, fed them for five years. Before them was set an abundance of fresh meats, vegetables, cereals, eggs, milk, fish, fresh fruit and sea-salt. Allowed to eat as much as they wanted of whatever they wanted, they proceeded to eat just as pediatricians would forbid them--quantities of meat and eggs, few vegetables and cereals. None of them ever ate spinach a second time. Some ate a wide variety of foods, some specialized But when, after five years, their individual diets were analyzed. Dr. Davis found that Nature had guided them wisely. Their diets were balanced, their teeth almost perfect.

Socialized Dentistry under government supervision, foreshadowed last winter in the report of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care . (TIME, Dec. 5. 1932), was a convention bugbear. From The Hague had come Dr. F. L. Nord to warn that socialized dentistry in Europe has resulted in lower fees for dentists, friction between them and bureaucrats. Dr. A. E. Rowlett, president of the British Dental Association, sent a proxy to read a paper urging U. S. dentists to accept the inevitable, take control of socialization before it is wrested from their hands. His proxy was Britain's first woman dentist, Mrs. Lillian Lindsay, 62. (In Britain dentists rate no title of "Dr.") Neat, cameo-faced Mrs. Lindsay, Librarian of the British Association, is one of Britain's experts on dental history. Last week the Chicago Dental Society announced that, as an experiment in what they regarded as the only practical alternative to government supervision, most of its members would shortly begin to set aside two hours daily during which they will treat private patients at reduced rates. Declared the Society's secretary, Dr. Stanley Tylman: "This is the best idea yet advanced. Americans are not clinic minded, but they will go to private dentists at reduced rates as long as they feel that they are not being given charity."

President-elect-- Named president-elect of the American Dental Association was Dr. Frank Munroe Casto, 58, genial Cleveland teeth-straightening specialist. A 4-handicap golfer who averages 80 on his home course, has shot a 70 and made two holes-in-one, he has just finished eight years as president of the American Dental Golf Association. Dr. Casto will take his new office at next year's convention in St. Paul.

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