Page 149 - My FlipBook
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:
HISTORY OF DEXTAL SUEGEliY : 119
JOHN TOMES.
In liis preface Mr. Tomes says
"When I had the honor to accept the office of dentist to the Middlesex
hospital, I promised the medical officers that, should it he thought desirable,
1 would deliver a course of lectures on dental physiology and surgery at the
medical school attached to that institution. * * •*
'•These lectures were written for and delivered to beginners. They were
not, and they are now, addressed to those already conversant with the subjects
of dental physinlogy and surgery. * * * The lectures were not written
for those who had learned, but for those who had yet to learn."
In the first words of his first lecture Mr. Tomes uses these words
"In a benevolent institution, like the Middlesex hospital, made to fulfill
the double purpose of providing medical aid for the indigent in their times
of sickness, and of affording instruction to tiiose engaged in the study of
medicine, it became the duty of all who treat disease, whether grave or trivial,
whether mental or bodily, to explain, to those of you who are pupils, the prin-
ciples on which their treatment is leased ; and it is equally, too, your duty
to avail yourselves of every opportunity to ac(|uire that professional knowl-
edge, in tiie practice of wliich your future years will !je spent; honoratily, if
you have knowledge, dishonorably, if you have not. Hence, it devolves on
me, in virtue of my office as dentist, to describe, and on you, in your pupilage,
to learn, the nature of the diseases to which the teeth are subject, and tlie
principles on whicli they may be most successfully ti'cated.""
In England, and in Continental Europe, the education of men for the
])ractice of dentistry in its scientific side was fostered and controlled in the
beginning by educators in the medical institutions. It is, therefore, not to
be wondered at that greater attention was given in these countries to in-
vestigations and discoveries in the fields of the underlying sciences that
largely obtain to tlieory •. while nnder the circumstances in which dentistry
was born and developed during our period of active experiment and quick
application of results to utilitarian uses in all vocations of life, dentistry
should have caught the impetus of the spirit of the times, and that thus its
practical side, and discoveries and investigations to facilitate this, was greatly
stinralated and encouraged. It made such progress as to give American den-
tistry preeminence throughoiTt the world in operative skill and daring, pros-
thetic excellence, and in the materials, instruments and appliances pos-
sessed of especial ada]itability, that necessity caused the inventive genius of
HISTORY OF DEXTAL SUEGEliY : 119
JOHN TOMES.
In liis preface Mr. Tomes says
"When I had the honor to accept the office of dentist to the Middlesex
hospital, I promised the medical officers that, should it he thought desirable,
1 would deliver a course of lectures on dental physiology and surgery at the
medical school attached to that institution. * * •*
'•These lectures were written for and delivered to beginners. They were
not, and they are now, addressed to those already conversant with the subjects
of dental physinlogy and surgery. * * * The lectures were not written
for those who had learned, but for those who had yet to learn."
In the first words of his first lecture Mr. Tomes uses these words
"In a benevolent institution, like the Middlesex hospital, made to fulfill
the double purpose of providing medical aid for the indigent in their times
of sickness, and of affording instruction to tiiose engaged in the study of
medicine, it became the duty of all who treat disease, whether grave or trivial,
whether mental or bodily, to explain, to those of you who are pupils, the prin-
ciples on which their treatment is leased ; and it is equally, too, your duty
to avail yourselves of every opportunity to ac(|uire that professional knowl-
edge, in tiie practice of wliich your future years will !je spent; honoratily, if
you have knowledge, dishonorably, if you have not. Hence, it devolves on
me, in virtue of my office as dentist, to describe, and on you, in your pupilage,
to learn, the nature of the diseases to which the teeth are subject, and tlie
principles on whicli they may be most successfully ti'cated.""
In England, and in Continental Europe, the education of men for the
])ractice of dentistry in its scientific side was fostered and controlled in the
beginning by educators in the medical institutions. It is, therefore, not to
be wondered at that greater attention was given in these countries to in-
vestigations and discoveries in the fields of the underlying sciences that
largely obtain to tlieory •. while nnder the circumstances in which dentistry
was born and developed during our period of active experiment and quick
application of results to utilitarian uses in all vocations of life, dentistry
should have caught the impetus of the spirit of the times, and that thus its
practical side, and discoveries and investigations to facilitate this, was greatly
stinralated and encouraged. It made such progress as to give American den-
tistry preeminence throughoiTt the world in operative skill and daring, pros-
thetic excellence, and in the materials, instruments and appliances pos-
sessed of especial ada]itability, that necessity caused the inventive genius of
