INTRODUCTION. 



Dentistry is the art of repairing the teeth or improving 

 their utility. Human dentistry embraces the art of supply- 

 ing artificial substitutes for the teeth when the original ones 

 are lost, while animal dentistry includes the therapeutics of 

 the secondary pathological processes and lesions in the 

 mouth and nasal cavities, caused by the teeth. It is, however, 

 essentially a mechanical rather than a surgical departure, 

 and a preventive rather than a curative eflfort. Its province 

 ends with the teeth and their immediate environs. Dis- 

 orders of the digestion or impairment of the general health, 

 although directly traceable to the teeth, cannot be included 

 within the domain of dentistry. The principal object of 

 dentistry is to promote the general health by improving the 

 mastication and by relieving pain. It also aims at the pre- 

 servation of the juvenile appearance, to which the animal 

 dentist adds the amelioration of the driving defects of 

 horses. 



Human dentistry owes its existence to a single disease 

 process, caries, while animal dentistry depends upon a single 

 physical defect, enamel points. Without these two abnor- 

 malities dentistry would never have existed as an advanced 

 art; not because there are no other serious abnormalities 

 within the domain of dentistry, but because other abnormali- 

 ties are infrequent. Few mature human beings escape caries, 

 and few mature herbivora escape enamel points. Hence the 

 wide requirement for dental operations in the human family, 

 and in the chief domestic animal — the horse. As the extrac- 

 tion, replacement and repair of the decayed tooth is the chief 

 occupation of the human dentist, so is cutting and floating 



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