PROGRESS OF DENTISTRY IN AMERICA. 



BY TRUMAN W. BROPHY. 



[Truman William Rrnphy, dontist ; born Cook county, 111., April 12, 1848; oduca- 

 tod in the public schools, and Elpin, Illinois academy; graduated frr)in Pennsylvania 

 college of dental surgery, D. D. S., Rush medical college, M. I).; President of and 

 professor of oral surgery in Chicago college of dental surgery, associate professor of 

 surgery in medical department of the University of Chicago, president for the United 

 States of the fourteenth International Medical congress held at Madrid, Spain, 1903.] 



In order to consider this subject intelli.2;ently, we must 

 take a brief glance at the conditions which prevailed in our 

 country in the early part of the nineteenth centur}^ From^ 

 about the year 1785 to 1830, the method of dental practice 

 was almost entirely itinerant ; but few of the larger cities could 

 boast a resident dentist. The following is an extract from a 

 letter written by Dr. E. Parmly to Dr. J. Brockway, Sr. : 'Tn 

 1817 from Philadelphia to New Orleans, I met with no person 

 who even called himself a dentist, and I practiced in the prin- 

 cipal towns going w^est between these places." And Dr. Brock- 

 way himself, states that during the year 1822, while in prac- 

 tice in Vermont, he was the only dentist known, from Canada 

 to Albany, and from the Rocky to the White mountains. 



It is almost impossible for any one familiar with the pres- 

 ent methods of practice in dentistry, and with the finely 

 furnished and equipped offices of the practitioner, to realize 

 that it has been so short a time since the veiy beginning of 

 dentistry. During this earher period, dentistry was not looked 

 upon as a profession, but simply as a branch of mechanics, and 

 its followers were wholly dependent upon their own resources. 

 They had to manufacture all of the instruments which they 

 used, and they had to prepare their own materials for use hi 

 filling teeth; and it is remarkable that such a high degree of 

 success was attained by so many of these pioneers of the pro-^ 

 fession. 



Dentistry was without a history. There was no such a 

 thing as dental literature, but there were a few capable, earnest 

 men, whose prophetic eye could see great things in the develop- 

 ment of the profession in the future, \, In about 1839, a few of 



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