For Dental Cripples

Until last summer, when the Army decided not to look its gift horses in the mouth, bad teeth were the largest cause for rejecting drafted men (20.9% of rejected candidates). Now some 2,500,000 "dental cripples," whose teeth may unfit them for service at any time, are being drafted for the 11,000,000-man U.S. Army. Manhattan Dentist Charles L. Hyser has a plan, published last fortnight in Pepper Committee hearings, for making all 2,500,000 dental fit within a year, for about $25 apiece. Estimated average needs per man: two bridges, two extractions, five inlays, two fillings, numerous X rays.

Dr. Hyser believes that the Army Dental Corps, "organized not as a rehabilitation agency but rather to take care of routine dental work," can hardly do more than a patch-up job. His solution is to set up some 40 clinics, each one fixing up 200 patients every six-hour day. Clinic personnel would include 75 dentists, 20 hygienists, six surgeons, four radiologists.

Such a clinic could remouth 60,000 men a year. Chairs would be arranged in three "batteries": 1) the operative battery of ten chairs, turning out 20 inlays an hour; 2) the prosthetic (tooth replacement) battery of eight, making ten bridges an hour; 3) the synthetic filling battery of ten, making 24 fillings an hour. Men with toothless jaws would need special care, but nearly all others, according to Dr. Hyser could be handled on this dental assembly line in bucket-brigade fashion.

"The work," says Dr. Hyser, "should be planned for the lifetime of the patient and not regarded as a patching job done merely in order to get him into military service." His idea is no sudden inspiration. For ten years he has worked on plans to get dentistry to everybody. Under present conditions only 20% of U.S. citizens ever see a dentist and only 5% can be classed as having excellent dental care. Dr. Hyser says that his plan "for over a year has been passed around in Washington, been pronounced pertinent and practicable by the authorities--and left in the limbo of forgotten things."

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