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niSTOnY OF DENTAL SUKGERY 113

siderable complacent liumor. Wiile tliere were always broad-minded men
in the medical profession wiio, like Hunter, realized and taught that there
was nothing connected with the health and comfort of mankind, too unim-
portant or too insignificant for the care and attention of the medical man
and teacher, it is unquestionably true that for many years the medical pro-

NOEMAN W. KINCfST.PIY, D. D. S.

fession, as a whole, lookeil upon dentists, or tiie dental profession, very much
in the same way that, a hundred years or more previously, the physician
viewed the surgeon, and the surgeon the liarlier surgeon; but it is equally
true that the dental profession, or tlie dentists, did not imitate the barber-
surgeon and the surgeon in their contemptiu:)us treatment of the physicians.
The relations between medical men and dentists from the liroad professional
standpoint have always remained in an undefined and unsettled condition.
The question whether dentistry is a profession t)V itself or a department or
specialty of the medical profession has frequently been discussed by indi-
viduals, by societies and by the journals devoted exclusively to dentistry or