482 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 7£ 



relative who, with the enthusiasm and 

 pride begotten of a new and faultless dress, 

 starts out to-day refreshed and eager upon 

 her educational pathway. 



While dentistry and possibly dental edu- 

 cation, in some sort or degree, is doubtless 

 coeval with man and man 's physical needs, 

 dentistry as an organized department of 

 activity and education is but seventy years 

 old, its inception as a profession dating 

 from the establishment of the first school 

 for the systematic education of dental 

 practitioners in Baltimore in 1839. From 

 this initial and successful attempt at or- 

 ganization upon an educational basis have 

 arisen all subsequent efforts having the 

 same objective purpose, notwithstanding 

 the individual differences as to means and 

 methods which they severally involve. 



From the first successful attempt to pro- 

 vide the means for the systematic education 

 of the dentist down to the present time 

 both the effort and its practical realization 

 have been "hedged round and about" by 

 opposing opinions as to the relationship 

 which dental education should rightfully 

 bear to medical education. And while the 

 arguments of those who would compel the 

 merging of dental education within the 

 medical curriculum are even now manifest- 

 ing another periodical recrudescence, the 

 process of evolution and the incontestable 

 logic of fact and experience are more and 

 more firmly establishing dental education 

 upon an autonomous basis. 



It is not my ptirpose to enter into a dis- 

 cussion of the relationships of dentistry and 

 medicine further than to call attention to 

 the fact that from its beginnings as an edu- 

 cational system dental education has been 

 subject to more or less stress of criticism 

 because it has elected to develop outside of 

 the channels of medical education and to 

 mark its qualification with a degree dis- 

 tinctive of its own special culture. 



That our professional forebears were 

 wise in their decision to place dental edu- 

 cation upon an independently organized 

 basis is a conclusion which I think is justi- 

 fied by the practical success of their plan, 

 which in its evolution and development has 

 given to the world the profession of dentis- 

 try as we now find it ministering accept- 

 ably to the health and comfort of humanity 

 in all civilized nations. 



The social conditions, the social needs of 

 humanity to-day, are, however, not the same 

 as those which characterized the period 

 when dentistry as a profession was in its 

 swaddling-clothes. To quote a recent 

 phrase of President Eliot, "the world has 

 been remade in the last half century, ' ' and 

 it will, I think, be profitable for us to con- 

 sider to what degree dentistry and dental 

 education have kept pace with this world, 

 development ; in other words, has dentistry 

 remade itself in keeping with the intellec- 

 tual and material progress of society? 



Mr. Herbert Spencer enunciated as his 

 broadest and most comprehensive defini- 

 tion of life that it is "the continuous ad- 

 justment of internal relations to external 

 relations. ' ' Applying this definition to the 

 case in hand, our inquiry concerns the de- 

 gree and extent of the adjustment which 

 dental education has maintained with re- 

 spect to its environing social relations; has 

 it in its educational methods reflected the 

 intellectual progress of the times and fairly 

 met the demands of the social order by a 

 continuous adjustment thereto, thus dem- 

 onstrating its right to live? 



From the material point of view no 

 other than an affirmative answer is pos- 

 sible. When we consider the aggregate of 

 pain and suffering that has been mitigated 

 or completely banished by the skillful min- 

 istrations of the dental practitioner, when 

 we think of the added years of comfortable 

 human life, the relief of distress from dis- 



