Dental History

Last week in Baltimore 5,000 dentists from all corners of the U. S. came together like so many well-fitting bicuspids, to celebrate a century of scientific dentistry. The dentists had good cause to show their teeth in pride, for as an art, U. S. dentistry is the world's finest. From the days when Dentist Isaac Greenwood supplied grim-lipped George Washington with a set of wooden teeth (they splintered), a set of iron teeth (port wine rusted them), and a dressy set of bone teeth, U. S. dentists have come far.

For all their slick technique of drilling and filling, dentists have little more knowledge of the causes of tooth decay than they had 100 years ago. Dental caries (tooth decay) is the most prevalent disease in the U. S., attacks more than 95% of the population.

But the dentists at Baltimore reminded themselves how much worse things used to be:

> In 1840, high-minded Dentists Chapin Aaron Harris and Horace Henry Hayden opened the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, first in the world. In the freshman class were five students, their only qualifications reading & writing, tough biceps. After a four-month course, the boys went out into the world to battle brawny patients, crazy with pain. "Be pitiless," counseled Dr. Harris. "As the patient is very apt to catch the hand of the operator, he must have both hands ready and, when one is pulled away, seize the instrument with the other and so go on until the operation is complete."

Chief dental weapon at that time was "the key," a large iron hook with a head that ringed an aching tooth, a long handle for a good grip. "There never was a claw on bird or beast," wrote Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, "that was the cause of such anguish . . . such howls of agony as that diabolical instrument looking like a vulture's talon."

> Driven by necessity, dentists were pioneers in anesthesia. In 1844, Dentist Horace Wells of Hartford, Conn, inhaled laughing gas (nitrous oxide) before a colleague pulled his tooth. But the public jeered at his "remarkable discovery."

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