Page 208 - My FlipBook

176 HISTOKY OF DENTAL SURGERY

ignorant and incompetent professionall_y and wholly unscrupulous morally,
fit antetypes of the worst of the advertising quacks of our own day. For a
time they had a great following and the best dentists of New York found them-
selves sitting idly in tlieir offices while many of their best patients were waiting
their turns in the office of these quacks. Under such circumstances it was
natural that most of the good men of the profession should array themselves
in bitter opposition to these men and include in their condemnation the
material tliey used, while it was equally natural that a few should begin
to use the new filling nuiterial, either in response to the demands of their
patients or to remove from them the temptation to go to the quacks. The
operations made by the Crawcours appear to have been as slovenly and
incompetent as it is possible to imagine and in time their true characters
became apparent to the pu))lic so that they found it expedient to leave town,
prol)aIjly carrying with tliem a very satisfactory amount of money, and leaving
behind them the seed wjiiih developed into the bitterest controversy that has
ever occurred in the dental profession of the United States.
The most strenuous efforts were made for a long time to make amalgam
itself as disreputable as the men who first introduced it in New York, and the
endeavor to read out of the profession and expel from the American Dental
Association all who vised it, came near to disrupting the association; for an
increasing number of unquestionably honorable and competent men recognized
that amalgam had some merits and could be made to serve a useful purpose
in practice. During the heat of the controversy (and to some extent since
then), the most extravagant and the most ignorant assertions were made on
both sides, as to its merits and vises on the one hand and its faults and
injurious effects on the other. In time amalgam came to be used by almost
the entire profession, by a great many very largely, by a much smaller number
very sparingly, and a very few excluded it from their practice entirely. Among
these perhaps the most conspicuous in later years were Dr. Jonathan Taft and
Dr. H. J. McKellops, both of whom frequently declared they had never made
an amalgam filling, and Dr. Taft would never allow its use in the school of
which he was dean till his death in 1903.
The first amalgams were usually made from the filings of Spanish or
Mexican silver coins, because these contain less alloy than the United States
coinage and were more easily procured than pure silver. Such an amalgam is
very diilicult to amalgamate, makes a harsh mass, hardens very slowly but be-
comes very hard, and expands so much as to be very unsatisfactory, "most of
them about as good as nothing, much actually harmful." It turns very black.