Page 399 - My FlipBook

A Historical Review of Dental

Literature

By Edward C. Mills, D. D. S., Columbus, Ohio

TPIE literature which represents any human interest is the measure ot
its importance. It is tlic proof of existing culture and of accumulated
intellectual labor, broadening the human intellect and illuminating
the paths to wisdom and understanding. The arts, sciences and professions
have each their appropriate literature which keeps pace with their advance-
ment, and upon which their growth and expansion depend.
Dentistry had not even a name of its own until literature began to develoj)
for it a record of its deeds and possibilities, its methods and aims. We can
hardly over-estimate its influence in our profession, and we owe to the pains-
taking and unselfish labor of our dental writers our honorable status among
the learned professions. It is a far cry from the polished and learned treatises
of today back to the earliest dental record extant.
The torch of enlightenment for succeeding civilizations was licJd in the
hands of Egypt, and her time-worn monuments, standing in the dawn of the
historic morning of the world, we know mark not the beginning, but nuitely
testify to former periods of growth in art and science.
To the great centers of learning, such as Heliopolis, Memphis and Thebes,
were attracted the noted writers of antiquity, and to one of them, Herodotus,
we owe much of our knowledge concerning the practice of medicine among
tlie Egyptians, and he speaks of dentistry as of a well established fact. They
were specialists, each physician treating only one certain portion of the body,
or applying himself to one class of disease only—that they had treatises on the
various specialties we are assured by the Ebers Papyrus—and doubtless, in
359