On the present position of dental surgery, and its advancement as a branch of medical education : a letter addressed to Dr. Robert Omond, President of the Royal College of Surgeons / by John Smith, M.D.

  • Smith, John, M.D.
Date:
1858
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the present position of dental surgery, and its advancement as a branch of medical education : a letter addressed to Dr. Robert Omond, President of the Royal College of Surgeons / by John Smith, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    (•) be conducted or is established, seems to be considered necessary, and is, consequently, seldom or never possessed by such as merely receive this kind of education. Now, it is by no means to be able merely to relieve toothache or extract a tooth, that ought to be the limits of surgical qualification possessed by dental practitioners. Connected with the subject of dentistry, and unavoidably interfered with by the dentist, we have even the diseases of childhood during dentition,—which if not caused by are at least all intimately associated with this process, and the beneficial results of a more extensive acquaintance with which dis- eases, as directly and indirectly connected with dentition, is perhaps only yet to be ascertained; we have those afi^ections common to the teeth and mouth in after life; and what is more important still, we have their indirect evil results, in many cases so much more serious than the primary disease itself; these, and in connection with them the value of an acquaintance with the pathology and diagnosis of tumours, abscess, various forms of neuralgia, dyspepsia, etc.; all demand that instruction in these matters should be comprehended in the education of the dentist, as it becomes of the utmost im- portance that the detection and treatment of such diseases might, at least where the circumstances should so require it, be with safety and confidence committed to his care. It may be thought that this is conferring undue importance on such a branch of medicine as dental surgery. But no sectional de- partments of medicine can be with safety set down as unimportant; we may isolate them from the relations they bear to the science, considered as a whole, and ni that way hide from ourselves and fail to recognise their worth ; but, in truth, they are all links in one great chain of facts ; each has its own place; and the value it pos- sesses lies, not so much in itself, as in its connection with those other facts to which it is related ; and so it is with regard to the pathology and surgery of the dental system. As the natural result of this defective method of instruction, so generally pursued by dental practitioners, we find the amount of