DENTISTRY 
NOT A SPECIALTY IN MEDICINE. 
BY 
NORMAN W. KINGSLEY, D. D. S., 
Author of a Treatise on Oral Deformities. 
Hon, Member of the Odonto-Chirukgical Society of Scotland. 
President of the Dental Society of the State of New York, Etq , EtiT. 
Reprinted from the DENTAL HEADLIGHT, April. 188<. DENTISTRY NOT A SPEGIAETY IN MEDICINE.1 
NORMAN W. KINGSLEY, D, D. S. 
For many years I have been watching the tendency of events and 
drifting in a conflict of opinion upon the subject of this discourse 
until now my present conviction is that dentistry is not a specialty, 
in medicine.2 Such an assertion requires some boldness, in view of 
the prevalence of a contrary opinion, associated as it has been with 
the idea that, in some indefinite sort of way, to be regarded as spe- 
cialists in medicine gives us character and dignity, and invests us 
with the right to be called scientists. This desire to be considered 
medical specialists has its foundation in a notion that dentistry, pure 
and simple, is ignoble, to practice it degrading, and that to stand 
well in society we must resolve that we are not dentists, but medi- 
cal doctors practicing a specialty. It has also been stimulated by 
that spirit of contrariness which inspires children to cry for that 
which is denied them; and as the medical profession, as a whole, 
have denied that dentistry is a specialty of medicine, and is only a 
mechanical trade, dentists have got very much in the habit of deny- 
ing that dentistry is a mechanical trade, and on all occasions assert- 
ing and re-asserting that they belong to the great medical fraternity.3 
That they do sometimes prescribe medical remedies, apply leeches 
and cut gumboils is true, but there is not an old housewife in the 
1This paper is substantially the same as the Annual Address delivered before the 
New England Dental Society in Boston, October, 1886, with the addition of foot- 
notes. 
2It is not denied that dentistry is a branch of the healing art, but the intent of 
the declaration is that practically, and in all its organizations, dentistry is a sepa- 
rate and distinct branch of that art from medicine. 
3To such an absurd extent has this idea been carried that I have heard reputable 
and skilled dentists, men respected for their attainments, but who had not even the 
title of “ doctor” from a dental or medical college, gravely assert that they “ con- 
sidered themselves just as much practitioners of medicine as any physician.” They 2 
country who is not more of a medical doctor and better capable of 
treating the diseases of the family than the majority of dentists, 
even if they have the medical degree. 
Asserting that we are medical practitioners does not make us so, 
any more than the three tailors of Tooley Street became the “ peo- 
ple of England” when they met in solemn conclave and passed their 
famous resolution to that effect. One is reminded of the old fable 
of the ass with a lion’s skin. The skin was the skin of a lion, but 
the bray was that of an ass. 
The assertion of the medical fraternity that dentistry is only a 
mechanical trade because dentists make artificial teeth, is no wider 
of the mark than the claim of some dentists that, because they can 
stop a local ache or wrestle with pyorrhoea alveolaris, they are thus 
constituted specialists in medicine. 
The true status of dentistry is distinctly separated from either of 
these incongruous claims. Now, that there may be no ambiguity of 
terms, let me say, before going further, that by dentistry I mean to 
include every branch and department known under that name, and 
a dentist in the full sense of the term, in the present stage of the 
art, is one who understands and can practice each and every special- 
ty of it.1 The American Dental Association, as is well-known, is 
divided up into seven or eight sections. I was recently called upon 
to declare to which section I wished to attach myself. My reply 
was: u To no section; I am not the eighth part of a dentist, to 
which seven other parts must be added to make a whole.” 
I take pride in being a dentist in the full sense of the term. No 
man ever applied to me for a service that came within the range of 
dentistry to whom I was obliged to say : “ That is not my specialty ; 
I shall have to send you to some one else.” 
were practitioners of dentistry, but as medical practitioners they were pretenders, 
and could have with the medical profession no standing. If gentlemen wish to 
practice medicine, or he considered practitioners of medicine, let them go to a 
medical college, take out a degree, and then practice legitimately, hut do not attempt 
to get into the ranks of the medical fraternity under the cover of dentistry without 
even the degree of a dental college. Such pretensions only serve to bring the pro- 
fession of dentistry into disrepute. 
*A great deal of the discussion upon this subject would be saved if those who 
speak or write would use specific language. Upon the same page the terms “ den- 
tistry” and “ dental surgery” are frequently used as synonymous. But dentistry 
is a great deal more than dental surgery. Dental surgery is simply one branch of 
dentistry, and is that branch that if it were practiced by general surgeons would 3 
A dentist may be an oral surgeon, blit an oral surgeon is not a 
dentist. A dentist may be an excellent anatomist, physiologist, 
chemist, microscopist, artist, or mechanic, but neither one of these 
practiced to perfection makes him a dentist. 
I uesire to make the distinction very marked. Oral surgery, 
which is an almost infinitesimal part of dentistry (as dentistry is 
practiced daily the world over), is unquestionably a specialty or de- 
partment of general medicine. But dentists who affect oral surgery, 
or who occasionally perform some trifling operation, have not much 
more claim to be called surgeons than has the old farmer who opens 
a boil for one of his laborers to let out the core. Oral surgery, as 
practiced by dentists, is only a very small but not unimportant 
specialty of dentistry ; it occupies the debatable ground between 
dental and general surgery ; but as an essential department of prac- 
tical dentistry, its importance has been magnified by those practi- 
tioners who are more skilled in surgery than they are in dentistry. 
I affirm that dentistry is not a specialty of any other science or 
art, but is a profession in itself, as separate and distinct from all 
others as any other calling or vocation is distinct from every other. 
Dentists are very much in the habit of speaking of their occupa- 
tion, in one and the same breath, as a “ profession” and as a “ spe- 
cialty,” but I doubt very much if many of them could give any 
good reason why it should be called a profession. They use the 
term because it sounds well, is a little higher toned, and carries a 
degree of importance with it. 
But dentistry is a profession. It is a profession because it is a 
vocation of beneficence. This is so patent that I need not attempt 
to prove it, or enlarge upon it. Millions are on the earth to-day 
vv o call us blessed because of the comfort we have given them and 
the benefit they have derived from us. 
Dentistry is a profession by universal acknowledgment. All 
things in this world, physical, political, social or moral, by the law 
of equilibrium very soon find their own level. A man in his 
egotism, conceit, and vanity may assert this or that of himself, but 
whatever it may be, the great common sense of the “ plain people” 
(as Mr. Lincoln fondly called them) puts him in his true place. 
properly become a specialty of surgery. Even Dr. Marvin, who is the only one 
who has attempted a review of my position, says: “ Dentistry is more than a special- 
ty of medicine;” and in that one sentence he has nullified all his arguments to 
prove that it is only a specialty. 4 
Dentistry has been an organized science for more than a genera- 
tion, and has been called a “ profession” by universal consent by 
the cultured and uncultured, as well as by its own practitioners. 
Even the highest authorities in medical literature refer to dentistry* 
not as the “ dental specialty of medicine,” but as a “ profession.” 
That most distinguished of medical authors, the late Prof. Frank 
H. Hamilton, in a letter to the Odontological Society of New York, 
written last February, said : 
“ To Americans, by almost universal consent, is given the chief credit of having 
brought dentistry from a simple mechanical art to the rank of a science, and of 
having established for itself a just claim to the title of a “ learned profession.” 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, distinguished alike as an author and 
a savant—one who does not use the English language recklessly or 
without meaning—sent to the same society last winter this toast .• 
“ ‘ The Dental Profession and this Association as its worthy representative.’ It 
has established and prolonged the reign of beauty ; it has added to the charms of 
social intercourse and lent perfection to the accents of eloquence; it has taken 
from old age its most unwelcome feature and lengthened enjoyable human life far 
beyond the limit of the years when the toothless and purblind patriarch might well 
exclaim, ‘ I have no pleasure in them.’ ” 
This designation of it as a “ profession” is not an assumption like 
that of the barber, the dancing master, or the itinerant phrenolo- 
gist ; it is entitled to this distinction because the mastery of it as a 
science or an art involves a considerable knowledge of many other 
sciences. Its resources are not only nearly all the sciences, but, in 
an equal degree, nearly all the arts. Hardly an art, from plumbing 
to sculpture, but has its prototype in some branch of dentistry, and 
yet it is not a department or specialty of any one of them. 
Suppose that in some kind of manufacture in which I might be 
engaged I was using strips of iron punched full of holes, and wanted 
a machine to make them. Such a machine could be made by a 
combination of well-known movements; for example, a treadle and 
driving-wheel borrowed from a foot-lathe; the movement of the 
punch from a sewing machine, and the feeding apparatus from a 
saw-mill. Such a machine would be distinctly a new machine, and 
patentable as such, although deriving all its principles from old 
sources. It would not be an improvement on a foot-lathe, nor on a 
sewing-machine, nor again on a saw-mill. The new combination 
and new application of old principles would make it an entirely new 
machine. It is so with dentistry. 5 
While many of its processes are mainly of a mechanical nature, it 
is not a mechanical trade, inasmuch as a mechanical trade is gov- 
erned by fixed rules and a routine of labor, in which each workman 
is a servile imitator of the pattern given him, and can become mas- 
ter of his trade without any knowledge beyond its details. His 
brain is not constantly called upon to apply established principles 
to entirely new conditions and surrounding circumstances. The 
distinction which I would make between a trade and a profession is 
that, while the latter may employ the identical methods of the for- 
mer, the judgment and the inventive faculties of the practitioner 
must be in active exercise to apply those principles and those meth- 
ods to constantly varying conditions. 
The predominating feature and characteristic of dentistry, that 
which removes it farther than all else combined from medicine, is 
the mechanical character of its methods. We might as well try to 
blot out the inevitable laws of this universe as to ignore this great 
fact: Dentistry, as a profession, has for its corner-stone and its en- 
tire foundation mechanics applied by a knowledge of the various 
sciences. So much alike are the methods of the gold and silver 
jeweler to dentistry, that the acquirement of one would be a partial 
education for the other; yet making gold and silver jewelry is not 
a profession ; it is a trade. Dentistry, while using the same mechan- 
ical processes, is obliged to add invention in their applicaiion to 
every case. 
The methods of the painter and sculptor are the methods of the 
mechanic. But portrait, figure, and landscape painting and sculp- 
ture are branches of fine art, and the vocation is a profession, not a 
trade. Figure-painting and sculpture, particularly, require a better 
knowledge of general anatomy than dentistry does ; but who ever 
heard a sculptor assert that he was for that reason a “ specialist in 
medicine ?” Michael Angelo’s distinction and pre-eminence as the 
master artist of the world was due to his anatomical knowledge; 
and Sir Charles Bell made a science for artists in his “Anatomy and 
Physiology of Expression.” 
Blot mechanics from dentistry, and you might as well blot the 
sun from our terrestrial universe; chaos irredeemably follows. 
A few dilettanti may confine themselves to operations on the nat- 
ural teeth, and scout with indignation the idea that tfiey are 
mechanics, but every step of the operation in filling a tooth is 6 
purely mechanical. It requires nice skill, to be sure, but the skill 
is mechanical. That which dignifies it, bringing it above ordinary 
mechanics, is the fact that it is performed upon living organisms, 
and that which makes the operation professional is the knowledge 
of anatomy, pathology, etc., which discriminates in directing the 
mechanical treatment. 
We must form our judgment of dentistry as it is to-day, in the 
year of grace 1886, and not as it may be in some Utopian future, 
when the race shall have become so far advanced in the knowledge 
and application of hygienic principles, and all transmitted tenden- 
cies to deterioration have been stamped out, that teeth no longer 
need repair. Statistics of dentistry throughout the world to-day 
would undoubtedly show that three-fourths of the combined aggre- 
gate income of the profession is derived from the exercise of me- 
chanical skill, pure and simple, and that I believe without counting 
operative dentistry as a mechanical performance. 
Dentistry is not a specialty in medicine, because its chief and pre- 
dominating characteristics are utterly unlike any thing which is 
taught in medicine, requiring for their successful performance natu- 
ral faculties and acquirements that are entirely distinct from the 
practice of medicine. 
Dentistry may be said to be more nearly allied to medicine than 
to any other vocation, but an analysis may even question that. 
Laying aside, for the sake of the argument, what we consider as 
the unprofessional character of exhibitions of dental workmanship, 
and also the fact that such work is prosthetic in its intent, would we 
not be quite justified in making contributions to an industrial exhi- 
bition which was confined to works of art, including all objects of 
art in gold, silver, and porcelain ? Where are there any finer speci- 
mens of the art of gold-working than some of the so-called bridge- 
work of recent times ? 
In passing, I can not refrain from paying a tribute to such work 
shown by Dr. J. Rollo Knapp, of New Orleans, at the last meeting 
of the American Dental Association. They were brilliant mechan- 
ical achievements, and ought to make men who have been trying 
to cut off mechanics from dentistry hide their heads with shame. 
Men who-can fill a tooth and nothing more, who could not execute 
such a piece of prosthetic dentistry to save their lives, assume an 
air of smperiority and prate about relegating the mechanics of den- tistry to the shop and to mere mechanics. Wipe out of dentistry 
everything belonging to mechanics, and you will have taken away 
all the brains, and cut the head off close to the tail. 
If all the workers in metals, gold, silver, brass, iron, or steel—if 
all the workers in wood, carvers, cabinet-makers, and builders—if 
all the workers in pottery, moulders, porcelain makers, and deco- 
rators, together with all the artists, painters, and sculptors, were 
suddenly and simultaneously destroyed by some strange cataclysm 
or epidemic, those arts would not be lost; for in the ranks of the 
dentists could be found skilled experts in every one of them, and 
this comprehensive combination of natural faculties and acquire- 
ments is not to count against them, for if in the same grand catas- 
trophe all the scientists of certain classes were carried off, the same 
sciences could be fully taught by dentists. 
In the daily practice of dentistry can be found anatomists, physi- 
ologists, pathologists, histologists, biologists, microscopists, chemists, 
botanists, geologists, and metallurgists. 
Where in all the wide range ot human employment is there 
another vocation, no matter whether you call it a profession or a 
trade, of which such a statement can be made? 
That which makes dentistry as a science kindred to medicine as a 
science is the fact that it deals with a small but important part of 
the human economy. But the equally great fact that its methods 
are entirely distinct, requiring special education and special train- 
ing, make it an independent science, and in no sense subordinate to 
the other. 
The training of a dental student for his professional career is 
totally unlike that required by a medical student. Medicine in- 
volves hospitals and bedside practice, but dentistry involves, along 
with a study of the sciences, training the fingers, first, second, and 
all the time. 
If dentistry be a specialty of medicine, where was the necessity 
for State laws regulating its practice separate from those already in 
existence for the regulation of medicine ? Does not the greater 
necessarily include the less? Does general surgery, which is a de- 
partment of medicine, or oral surgery, which is a specialty, need 
special laws? Are not the laws of all the States, passed in the 
interest of medicine, quite sufficient to protect oral surgeons as well 
as oculists, gynecologists, and what not? Nevertheless, the State of 8 
New York, which is behind no other civilized community, did not 
include dentists among its exempts from jury duty, while it had 
exempted physicians, even from the organization of the govern- 
ment. I claim for myself the honor of obtaining from our Legis- 
lature a special law which exempted dentists equally with physi- 
cians from that annoying service. 
Dentistry became an independent profession, not through any 
spirit of rebellion against the medical profession, but from sheer 
necessity.1 The fathers of dentistry in this country were graduates 
of medicine, and hoped to dignify their vocation by grafting it upon 
medicine, and have the theory and practice taught in medical 
schools. Their application was refused, and the history of dentistry 
as an independent, progressive and scientific organization began, 
and to-day the wondrous fact is the astonishment and admiration of 
the scientific world. We have more than twenty independent in- 
stitutions of learning which teach everything that a dentist needs to 
know, and these institutions confer by authority on their graduates 
a separate degree. We have an independent literature which is not 
indebted to medicine so much as it is to other sciences. 
Anatomy, physiology, histology, microscopy, chemistry, etc., are 
not medical studies. They are sciences upon which medical and 
other studies are based. 
We have an independent journalism, larger than the total of 
medical journalism when our history began. We have independent 
national, State, and local organizations that are vital, active, and 
progressive, and what might once have been—viz., dentistry taught 
and practiced as a specialty of medicine—can not now, in the very 
nature of things, ever be brought about.2 
1There is a great deal of sentiment being wasted over the maternity of dentistry, 
the effeminate brethren with no backbone of their own being shocked at the idea 
of the dental profession being rudely torn from the bosom of its mother, medicine. 
But the fact is, medicine was not its mother, notwithstanding Dr. Marvin, after 
great travail, found an “umbilical cord which, running back through all the vari- 
ations of direction and apparent diversity of operation, shall be seen to be attached 
inseparably and forever.” And medicine never was, and is not now, its nurse. 
Dentistry has become what it is by its own efforts, and without any fostering care 
from medicine, either as a profession or an organization. The dental profession 
has had to fight its way to recognition as a scientific organization in the face of 
sneers, ridicule, and contempt, which, even in medical journals, has not ceased. 
*So long as we maintain separate organizations and distinct institutions of edu- 
cation, qualifying men to enter and practice the profession of dentistry, and con- 9 
Even if it were possible at this day to blot out all the organiza- 
tions—literary, social, educational, and scientific—which now mark 
its independence, and reduce the profession to a mere section of 
medicine, no man with any pride in his calling or desire for its 
highest attainments would consent to it. The attempt to make it 
so now emasculates and degrades it. Furthermore, the tendency of 
the times is against it. Great social and political problems are 
beidg rapidly worked out. The growth of States and of capital is 
toward centralization. The growth of science is by segregation; 
the cellular theory is beautifully exemplified in its development. 
As knowledge increases, the sciences divide and subdivide into 
specialties, and the specialty, through its independent and fre- 
quently original methods of investigation, speedily takes rank as a 
distinct science. In separate organizations the sciences will con- 
tinue to advance; centralize them and make them specialties of one 
another, and the structure becomes top-heavy and crumbles. 
Naturally, my audience will turn to the problem of the best 
method of preparing men for the practice of this independent pro- 
fession. The day was in the memory of some of my hearers, when 
the ideal philosopher had acquired and possessed the sum of human 
knowledge. It is not a century since a cyclopaedia of modest 
dimensions would contain all that the human mind had gathered of 
all the sciences, in all the ages, which was worth knowing and pre- 
serving. The day is when dentistry—once an empirical trade, and 
now an independent profession—requires from those who would 
stand in the front a devotion to study and an active acquaintance 
with the current advance of allied sciences, greater than was de- 
manded of the philosopher of a former age, who held within his 
own brain the entire sum of human knowledge. 
We must not forget that it is these times and this generation which 
demand our notice. We are not making plans for the millennium, 
nor for some ideal and Arcadian state of existence. The duties of 
to-day crowd upon us, and to meet fully the to-day is the very best 
way to be prepared for the morrow. The morrow grows out of and 
upon the to-day. To plan for to-morrow and leave to-day is lu- 
ferring upon them a separate degree, just so long will we be “an independent pro- 
fession, and not subordinate to any other.” And not until the degree of D.D.S. is 
recognized as entitling its holder to membership in medical associations can den- 
tistry be considered in any other light than an independent profession. 10 
nacy ; to meet fully the emergency of to-day, even giving no thought 
to the morrow, is the foundation of wisdom. Of course, I do not 
use the terms u to-day ” and “ to-morrow ” in their literal sense, 
but make them figures of speech to stand for the present time and 
the great unknown future. 
The fiat of nature that man shall earn his daily bread has not 
been repealed. The struggle to-day for the necessities and com- 
forts of life is as obligatory as ever, and with the rapid changes 
in our social life and increasing competition, we are forced more and 
more into narrower circles. The lads of this hour are men in the 
next, and within the hour they must become self-supporting. The 
law is inexorable. 
The dental profession in this country is not recruited from the 
dilettanti of modern society—thank God—nor to any considerable 
extent from rich men’s sons. The records of our colleges will not 
show ten per cent, of the students who are independent of their 
own earnings in obtaining their education, either already earned or 
their future mortgaged to return it. The grand achievements of 
the past and the hope and promise of a glorious future for our pro- 
fession rest very largely upon this condition. Nothing makes success 
so valuable as the difficulties one overcomes in obtaining it. 
Let me draw the picture from life. A young man with an 
academic education and limited means, with refined and artistic 
tastes, with natural abilities of that order that heds far more inter- 
ested in the arts than in metaphysics or theology, is asking himself 
what occupation he shall adopt to obtain a living. As a boy, he 
could use his jack-knife with some skill, but if he attempted to 
swap jack-knives he was sure to get cheated. Commerce and 
trade are, therefore, not his sphere. His ambitions and social sur- 
roundings prompt him to a more independent life, than that of a 
mechanic with fixed hours and daily wages. Neither the practice 
of law nor the practice of medicine offers any field for the gratifica- 
tion of his tastes, but in an eminent degree the practice of dentistry 
does. And now comes his answer to the query which is agitating 
every dental society in the land. He says: “I have determined to 
be a dentist, and I am going to adopt that course of training which, 
with my limited means, will earliest make me master of my chosen 
profession. I do not wish to be a physician; I have no taste 
for nursing or gynaecology, any more than I have for law or theology. 11 
The general culture which a knowledge of those sciences gives I 
would like, but they do not concern me immediately. I can gratify 
any desire that I may have in that way after I am master of this 
one profession, providing that I do not find in that one full employ- 
ment for scientific investigation. I find there are schools for dental 
students, and that graduates from those schools have become the 
most honored and skillful practitioners that ever lived or ever will 
live, and with that encouragement before me, it is all I want.” 
Is the young man’s reasoning wrong? He makes a practical 
application of conditions which Harvard, Yale, and Cornell recog- 
nize, and all the advanced thought of the age indorses—viz., that 
man’s education should have, first, special reference to his chosen line 
of life, and that those branches of science which do not have direct 
bearing upon that calling may be eliminated without harm. 
At this point I may as well meet squarely the issue which is 
being forced upon us by some short-sighted enthusiasts, viz., that 
graduation in medicine is essential as a basis of dental education, 
and in the great to-morrow all dentists must be, first, graduates of 
medicine, and after that dentists. I can only liken these gentlemen 
to the passenger who sits on the rear platform of a railway train with 
his back toward the engine, and views the scenery after it has passed. 
The Vice-President of the Southern Dental Association, in his 
recent essay on dental education, would banish the dental degree, 
blot out dental colleges, and compel all students to obtain their 
dental education in medical schools, receiving the degree of Doctor 
of Medicine before allowed to practice. He has the hardihood to 
predict that such a condition will come about “ within the next 
decade.” But he is no wilder in his lunacy than the present 
President of the American Dental Association, who says: “Den- 
tistry is not a profession, nor can it be except as it is medical, 
. . . and so sure as the sun shines the time will come when 
all dentists will be required to be medically educated.” The 
trouble with both these eminent gentlemen is that they are sitting 
on the rear platform of the train, and have put the wrong end of 
the prophetical telescope to their eyes, and can not discern that the 
inevitable progress of events is exactly in the opposite direction. 
Besides, their vision is blinded with a vague idea that M.D. tacked 
op to a dentist’s name makes him, in the eyes of the community, 
and, in fact, a better dentist; but no more foolish fallacy ever took 12 
possession of a misguided brain. The status of dentistry to-day 
shows it. The most skillful practitioners in the world, acknowl- 
edged so both by the community who seek their services and by 
their professional confreres, receive the reward of their merits 
utterly irrespective of graduation in medicine, or the possession of 
that degree through favor. 
But there are other gentlemen equally capable of casting the 
dental horoscope who express themselves differently. 
Before the American Dental Association iu August, 1884, Dr. 
C. W. Spalding, whose eminence as an author, teacher, and prac- 
titioner no oue will question, made use of the following language : 
“In this matter of preliminary medical education, it seems to he that the cart 
is put before the horse. Let us perfect ourselves in dentistry, and then if we 
choose to adorn ourselves with a medical education, all very well. The difficulty is 
that we attempt to lay the foundation in the science which does not include our 
own at all, or, if at all, only to a small extent. What is the difference between 
dentistry and medicine? The foundation-principles upon which dentistry rests 
are anatomy, physiology, and chemistry, including also special pathology, thera- 
peutics, and materia medica, with what we call operative and artificial dentistry. 
These compose the basis upon which the science of dentistry rests. It does not 
include an accurate knowledge of obstetrics and gynaecology, nor an accurate . 
knowledge of fevers and the like. AVhy should we educate ourselves, or require 
others to educate themselves, in branches that do not essentially belong to our 
profession? Why should we educate ourselves in non-essentials first, and in 
essentials, afterward ? Let us have the essentials first, and then if other things 
can be added to advantage, that is a good thing.” 
Since writing the foregoing, I am in receipt of a letter from a 
practicing dentist, a graduate of medicine and a professor in a den- 
tal college, who speaks from experiment and experience. He says : 
“ My experience as one of the founders of an institution of learning for the 
purpose of educating medical graduates to practice dentistry has convinced me, 
against my will, that it is impossible to make skillful dentists, as a rule, from such 
material. A young man who would be a successful dentist must begin his study 
with his mind fixed, as far as possible, on his life-work. I am in favor of dentists 
studying medicine, but not engaging in medical study until after they become 
dentists. Oral surgery is a legitimate specialty of medicine ; not so with dentistry. 
Oral surgery is taught in all schools of medicine, but who knows of a medical col. 
lege in which men are taught dentistry? Dentistry, therefore, is not, nor can it 
ever be, a department of medicine, or a specialty of .medicine in the sense that is 
ophthalmology, etc. This conclusion I have arrived at against my will. I have 
been forced to these convictions, and have abandoned a pet theory in consequence 
thereof, and these conclusions are not founded on theory, but facts which have been 
established on the firm ground of an expensive and hard-earned experience.”1 
xDr. T. W. Brophy. 13 
My own convictions must be already foreshadowed : dentists 
must be taught in dental schools, and dental schools must teach 
every thing that a dentist needs to know, which pertains to the prac- 
tice of his profession. It is not a matter of any consequence 
whether such schools form a department in a university or maintain 
an independent organization, so long as the student secures the best 
training to fit him for his professional career. The question of a 
preliminary education is fast settling itself. The position which a 
dentist is to assume through life, as a professional man, demands at 
least what is known as a good academic education, and the dental 
colleges of to-day are recognizing this fact. 
If I were to create a type which would be my ideal of a dentist, 
I would have him possessed of all the academical, classical, and 
scientific knowledge that the world contains; and to crown it all, 
he should be a dentist. But such an idea is clearly chimerical. 
Life is too short and the capacity of the human mind too limited to 
make even an approach to it. Therefore, in the prescribed educa- 
tion of the dental student of to-day, only what is absolutely essen- 
tial to make him master of his vocation is all that we have any 
right to require of him. After that, he may follow the bent of his 
natural tastes. 
Let no man who may be disposed to criticise my opinions say 
that I am opposed to a thorough education,' and more than all, I 
wish to disclaim any disrespect for, or any attempt to detract from, 
the value of a medical education. On the contrary, if any man 
feels that the study of and graduation in medicine is going to help 
him in the practice of dentistry, by all means encourage him. He 
can not have too much knowledge, be it of medicine or any other 
science. But if he be a dentist and has obtained the degree of M.D. 
by graduation, let him not be vain enough to conceive that by 
its possession he has thus acquired skill superior to those who have 
not, and then flaunt his title in their faces with the Pharisaical air, 
“ I am holier than thou.” I know many a dentist who, having ob- 
tained all the knowledge of his profession that the educational ad- 
vantages of his times could give, and yet thirsting for a knowledge 
of cognate sciences, has, with the cares of a not very remunerative 
practice, nevertheless devoted all his spare hours, and eked from his 
scanty income the means to enable him to graduate in medicine. 
All honor to such men, I say. God bless them. The spirit which 14 
prompts them entitles them to a higher place than the acquirement 
of the degree even gives them. But while I am full of admiration 
for him who has earned his degree, I have equal contempt for the 
dentist who, without a medical education, succeeds in making him- 
self so solid with the faculty of some medical college that they con- 
fer the degree upon him, and thereafter he plays the part of a syco- 
phantic hanger-on to the out-skirts of a profession which he could 
not by any possibility practice. 
Fortunate it was for posterity that Chapin A. Harris and his 
colleagues were denied admission to the medical colleges. They 
builded wiser than they knew. Dentistry, independent, has grown 
with a vigor unparalleled. Grafted upon the medical stock and 
and drawing its life, not from its own roots, but from the tainted 
juices of the parent tree, it would have been stunted and dwarfed 
beyond a possibility of redemption. 
If to-day all the medical colleges, together with the entire medical 
profession, were blotted out, the practice of dentistry would not be in- 
jured in the least, nor would humanity, suffering from diseases of the 
teeth, be one whit the less cared for.1 
Dentistry has come to stay ; not as a specialty, but as an honor- 
able, dignified, learned, scientific, beneficent, and independent pro- 
fession. 
Dental colleges have come to stay. The degree of D.D.S. has 
come to stay, and dental societies have come to stay. 
2Another issue is being forced upon us and rapidly approaching a 
crisis. An International Medical Congress is announced to be held 
in this country, at Washington, in September, 1887, and dentists 
are asked to form a section of that Congress. It would not require 
a very astute observer to divine, from my present discourse, wh, t 
position on such a question I would be likely to take. 
Mf the statement contained in this paragraph is correct—and I have yet to find 
it disputed—then every argument which has been advanced against dentistry being 
an independent profession goes for naught. 
2This paragraph was written at a time of almost universal apathy and indiffer- 
ence in the dental profession regarding the dental section m the Medical Congress, 
and the feeling was based mainly on the fact that the section was to be composed 
only of those who held the degree of M.D., and others whom the Council saw fit 
to invite. I asked one of the highest officers of that section, “What rights den- 
tists without a medical degree would have in the Congress?” and his answer was r 
“ No rights; those who are invited can enter, otherwise not.” As not five per cent, 
of practicing dentists have that degree, it was quite evident that “as an independ 15 
As an independent profession, we have no business there. As 
dentists, we are out of place. 
A section of oral surgery is eminently proper, and if there are 
oral surgeons enough in the world who want a section all to them- 
selves, by all means let them have it, but do not hitch dentistry on 
to the end of the tail of the medical kite to give it ballast for a 
higher flight. 
From more than one source have I heard this humiliating argu- 
ment in its favor: “ We ought to form this section because it will 
give us such an excellent opportunity to obtain recognition.” Do 
those who talk about “ recognition ” in this connection realize wha 
the word involves? In plain language it means that our condition 
heretofore has been one of inferiority and abasement, but by join- 
ing such a Congress we shall immediately, by some sort of presti- 
digitation, be lifted into a very grand and influential place. 
Dentistry in America needs no recognition that a Medical Con- 
gress can give. The only recognition that we need is that from all 
classes of the community, cultured and uncultured, and all pro- 
fessions, law, theology, and medicine alike; a recognition that we 
are what we pretend to be—a benefit and a necessity to the health 
and comfort of the community. Any other recognition from a 
medical congress, even if filled with compliments, would be empty 
as sounding brass. 
If we are strong enough to form a section which will be a credit 
to dentistry in America, we are strong enough to have, in the not 
far-off future, a whole congress all to ourselves, and when that day 
arrives the eyes of the whole world will be centered upon us. We 
shall not be swamped in the multitude of specialties in medicine, 
like the poor relations who are invited to the feast but find them- 
selves sitting at the second table. 
ent profession we had no business there.” But during the time of the anniversary 
meeting of the District Society in New York, in January, the attitude of that sec- 
tion toward the profession was changed, and it was stated that any reputable den- 
tist could have admission, irrespective of a special invitation. The question of the 
dental profession joining in an International Medical Congress became one solely 
of policy, and at this time, and under these altered conditions, it is policy to maKe 
the section a creditable representation of dentistry in America. But full fruition 
will not be reached until there is held in this country an International Dental 
Congress. A congress of dentists and for dentists, and into which every reputable 
dentist in the world shall have the right to enter.