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98 HISTORY OF DENTAL SUEGERY

city at tliat time. The title page with its engraving is reproduced. It is
full of suggestiveness. In the j^reface the author indulges in these obser-
vations :
"When, through negligence, many of them (the teeth) have decayed, and
the remainder are rapidly falling into the same condition is pleasant to
; it
learn, that the diseases may be stayed : that the places of the absent teeth
may be supplied with others, both useful and ornamental; and that those
which have become partially diseased may lie rendered of service to us, as
we continue our attentions.
"The hollow check, the putrid saliva, which contaminates the whole sys-
tem, the foul breath, and days and nights of agony are not the worst conse-
quences of our neglect: the unpitying and murderous hand of the dentist is,
alone, a sufficient punishment for our carelessness.
"Tlie great impositions which have been practiced by some who call them-
selves dentists, render it necessary that every one who values his teeth should
be able to distinguish the imposter from him who understands his business.
"Most people may be deceived at the time of an operation, though woful
experience in a few months unfolds the deception. The imposter is sought
for to make reparation, or to receive merited punishment, biit the bird
has flown; he is gone to practice his tricks and deceptions among those
who know not his character, until prudence drives him into another seclu-
sion from revenge, into another 'shoal of gudgeons.'
"In all occupations it is safer to employ those only whose permanent
residence enables us, at all times, to call them to account for negligence or
deception. The itinerant dentist ought, therefore, never to be trusted."
A similar work under the title of a "Popular Essay on the Structure,
Formation and Management of the Teeth," by the late Mr. Fuller, was pub-
lished in London in 181.5, with introductory observations by Richard Downing
(surgeon dentist).
In his introductory chapters Downing states that the natural history of
the teeth liad not commanded any particular attention in England until
the publication of the book of John Hunter, in ITTl, but since that time the
teeth had received their share of notice in the lectures on physiologv, and
courses of lectures had been instituted expressly on them. The first dis-
tinct course of lectures on the teeth was delivered by "the late Mr. Rae,
surgeon dentist to the king," whose early death, however, by a fall from a'
horse, terminated the course. In 1799, Joseph Fox commenced a course of
lectures on the structure and diseases of the teeth, which he continued to