Sesquicentennial review: the making of a profession.

I shook my head on many occasions as I contemplated the changes in dentistry that have occurred over the past 150 years that I would discuss in this article, often thinking to myself, "How could the early dentists have possibly practiced dentistry every day under those circumstances and with those tools?" It made my own clinical career seem pretty easy but engendered in me great admiration for my predecessors and our profession.

The Royal Colleges, the LDS and the struggles of the dental profession.

This paper is based on a lecture to the symposium on 'apprenticeship to life long learning: dental education through the centuries', Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow.

The Edinburgh Dental Dispensary 1860 to 1879.

The Edinburgh Dental Dispensary began in 1860 as a private charity to provide free treatment for the poor and to teach students. In 1862 the dispensary became a public charity in new premises with a committee of managers. Dental students were admitted in 1864. By 1867 the annual number of patient attendances was about 4,000 and the mainstay of treatment was extraction. Housekeepers were the only support staff. The dispensary was constantly impecunious; in 1869 the managers considered discontinuing the service. In February 1879, following the 1878 Dentists Act, the dispensary was merged into the new Edinburgh Dental Hospital and School.

The Texas Dental Association and advocacy: a TDA president's perspective.

The TDA can take pride in the joint efforts of its leadership, its grassroots members, and its elected representatives in the middle of the decade of the 1990's. When asked about his legacy for the leadership of our organization, Dr. Eggleston emphatically states, "You have to act. You have to do the right thing even when you have critics and detractors." More recently, during his campaign for ADA President-elect, he constantly stressed the importance of our relationship with each other. Our relationship, in Dr. Eggleston's words now and during his TDA presidency, "is more important than all issues put together". As this brief retrospective illustrates, the issues faced by dentists and the TDA are never trivial and are always tied to the legislative process. Political advocacy by our association is, therefore, our first priority now, no less so than it was in the mid-1990's. As described in the recent "TDA Report Card" on our legislative agenda for the 80th Texas Legislature, our challenges continue unabated, but these challenges are answered, and in many cases, successfully overcome as a result of our advocacy efforts. Our need for constant involvement in the legislative process is perhaps best summarized by advice given to Dr. Eggleston by Senator (and oral surgeon) David Sibley at the 1995 TDA Annual Session. Senator Sibley complimented TDA on its achievements during the 1995 Texas legislative session, and added "but you've got to keep your garden weeded."

['Young women and lady dentists': training, degrees, and the market in the first decades of the Republic]. / 'Moças e senhoras dentistas': formação, titulação e mercado de trabalho nas primeiras décadas da República.

Since the 1980s, more women than men have graduated from Brazil's dentistry schools, yet little has been written about women's access to the profession. This article provides background information useful in analyzing the training and professional roles of women dentists in Brazil during the first years of the Republic; discusses the relation between changes in the profession, health policies, and the gender system during that period; and contributes to the discussion on the feminization of the profession. The article is part of a broader project investigating training, professional roles, and the labor market in the health field in São Paulo. Sources include articles published in newspapers, magazines, and specialized journals devoted to dentistry, pharmacy, and medicine, along with government and university records covering the years 1892 through 1926.

Prosthodontics: a past with a future?

As one of the oldest dental specialties, prosthodontics has a long history of innovation and adaptability. This overview of the field presents landmarks in the development of prosthodontics from mediaeval times to the present and speculates on some future trends. It effectively sets the stage for the other articles in this issue, which explore the many facets of prosthodontic evolution.

Centenario de la creación del título de Odontólogo en España / A hundred years from the creation of the Dentist degree in Spain

Se narran aquí las alternativas que llevaron a la creación oficial de este título, y la intervención del Dr. Florestán Aguilar, prestigiosa figura de la odontología hispana, ampliamente conocido en Argentina y en América

Dental questions in Frank Norris's novel "McTeague".

Frank Norris's McTeague, one of the first novels in which the main character is a dentist and dentistry is central to the plot, has been a minor member of the American literary canon for over a century. Possibly because Norris was such a committed and practicing realist/naturalist, his characterization of McTeague as a believable dentist has not until now been questioned. Nor has his use or misuse of the California Dental Licensure Legislation of 1885 to bring about McTeague's downfall been subjected to historical analysis. Such analysis may cast doubt on the credibility and reputation of the novel.

Banning live patients as test subjects on licensing examinations.

The use of live patients on the licensing examinations was a part of dentistry for almost the entire twentieth century and continues up until today. Considerable new debate about the appropriateness of using live patients as test subjects began in the mid-1990s and culminated in the passage of a resolution in the American Dental Association's year 2000 House of Delegates calling for an end to this practice by the year 2005. The live patient examination tests a narrow range of clinical skills, creates ethical dilemmas for candidates, for the host institution, and for the profession, and is unable to distinguish between those ready to assume independent practice from those who are not yet at that level of competence. There are other ways to test for such readiness including proposals in New York State to substitute a postdoctoral year or mannequins in place of live subjects. The public and the dental profession will be better off by developing alternative licensing tests to the use of live subjects.

Ethics--dental registration in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century.

In the histories of dentistry, some mention is made of the licensing of tooth-drawers, and those who provided dental healthcare before the term Dentist started to become general in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One of the most striking references to licensing appears in a little piece of doggerel printed under a 1768 print by Dixon after Harris.

[How to become a dentist in Sweden during the 19th century]. / Hur blev man tandlakare i Sverige under 1800-talet?

Two hundred years ago, in 1797, a decree from the Government stated that 50 so called "operators" within dentistry must undergo examination by the Royal Medical Board. It was only non-Swedish dentists who underwent examination until 1833, when the first Swedish citizen was approved as a dentist. He had been educated in France and in Germany. After 1840, the dental curriculum was based on private courses, such as lectures in anatomy, physiology and clinical training at a private dental practice. The result of the studies was dependent on the student's own initiative. When the Swedish Dental Association was founded in 1860, an organized and systematical work started in order to establish a Dental School run by the Government in Sweden. In 1898 this goal was reached.