Page 144 - My FlipBook

lli IlLSTOKl' OF DENTAL SUEGERY

to medicine. Long controversies, sometimes satirical, sometimes Inimorons,
have been indulged in on both sides of the proposition. There has never
been a court of competent jurisdiction to render a final decision in the case,
and so dentistry has grown iip with its own special schools, its own special
investigators, discoverers and inventors, its own extensive literature and
journalism, into an independent branch of the healing art, not only without
the assistance of the medical profession, but many times against the opposi-
tion of its members. It is not to be wondered that under these conditions
the relations between dentists and physicians at the present time are dif-
ferent from those between physicians and the ophthalmogolist, the aurist,
the gynecologist and other men practicing specialties of the healing art
whose training has been entirely gained under the instruction and by the
aid of purely medically educated men.
The pages of the "Medical Record" in the latter part of October, 1886,
contain a very elaborate exposition of the relations of dentistry to medicine
presented by \V. A. Purrington, Esq., for the medical side of the question,
and by Dr. Norman W. Kingsley, President of tlie New York State Dental
Society, for the other view. Dr. Kingsley controverts the position taken
by Mr. Purrington in his review of the statutes of the state of New York
relating to the practice of medicine, by showing that he wishes to correct a
somewliat prevalent erroneous impression, namely, tliat dentistry is a specialty
of medicine, and ''the term dentistry covers every l)rancli and department
known imder 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 it and
every specialty of it."
''A dentist may be an oral surgeon,'" Dr. Kingsley continued, "but an oral
surgeon is not a dentist. A dentist may be an excellent anatomist, physi-
ologist, chemist, niicroscopist, artist or meclianic, but no one of these makes
him a dentist.
"Oral surgery, even in its most compreliensive sense, is not dentistry;
no more than dentistry in its most comprehensive sense is not oral surgery;
I, therefore, affirm tliat dentistry is not a specialty of any other science or art,
but is a profession of itself, as separate and distinct from all others as any
other calling or vocation is distinct from every other.
"Dentistry is a profession because it is a vocation of beneficence. This
is so patent that I need not attempt to prove it. Millions are on the earth
today who call us blessed, because of the comfort we have given them and
the benefit they liave derived from us.