CHAPTER IX 

 DENTAL INSPECTION 



DR. WILLIAM OSLER is credited with saying, " If I were 

 asked to say whether more physical deterioration was 

 produced by alcohol or by defective teeth, I should say 

 unhesitatingly, defective teeth." The history of the movement for 

 dental inspection of school children shows that during the past decade 

 educators and hygienists all over the world have been awakening to 

 a realization of the truth and significance of Dr. Osier's statement. 



Although the development of dental inspection both in 

 America and abroad has come almost entirely within the past 

 decade, the beginnings date back more than a quarter of a century. 

 So far as is known the first free dental clinic in the world was 

 established in Rochester, New York, more than twenty-five years 

 ago. While this was not strictly a school clinic, work with children 

 was done and the present movement might have had its inception 

 there had not lack of support resulted in the closing of the clinic 

 after some two years of existence. 



Fifteen years later dental work for school children was 

 seriously started in Germany and was soon followed by similar 

 work in England, in the United States, and to some extent in 

 other countries. 



The movement owes its rapid development to the world- 

 wide awakening to the importance of dental conditions and still 

 more directly to the publication of the findings of school physicians 

 employed in the work of medical inspection. These reports have 

 shown with convincing consistency that a large proportion of 

 all school children are suffering from decayed teeth. These 

 results come from all civilized countries and reveal especially 

 serious conditions in the poorer quarters of our great cities. 



Thus Unghavari reported* as a result of his studies of 

 dental conditions among school children in Hungary that 87 per 



* Unghavari (Hungarian physician): A study in Scedegin. Referred to by 

 W. H. Burnham in Hygiene of the Teeth, Pedagogical Seminary, September, 1906, 

 p. 293. 



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