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HISTORY OF DENTAL SURGERY 389
if lie elect otherwise, decline the treatment of any case. The argument is
only an endorsement of the higlier education and wider culture for which we
contend."
To this the "Cosmos" editor replies: "But let us reverse the picture.
'Chancing, this very day,' to step in at the house of a medical friend, a gen-
eral practitioner, we found his wife suffering from an atrocious alveolar ab-
scess, of the pathology and therapeutics of which the doctor was as innocent
as a child, and had not recognized the imminent risk of an external disfigur-
ing scar or fistula. This is not an extreme or isolated case. Doctors are
proverbially ignorant of the proper treatment of the simplest dental lesions,
and we doubt if one in ten can tell the period and order of eruption of the
deciduous teeth, or explain the relation of the first molar to the temporary
and permanent dentitions. If it be replied that such knowledge would not
be demanded of the general physician, a fitting answer would be the fable of
the dog in the manger. That doctors, as a class, are not familiar with dental
lesions will not be disputed, and the effort to belittle the practice of those to
whom they themselves apply when suffering in their own persons from such
conditions, is, to say the least, in bad taste."
The editorial continues further : "The question is not what dentistry
has been, but what oral surgery should be ; not what are the qualifications of
the majority of those now practicing it, btit what is its legitimate province,
and what the requirements for its intelligent practice. We see no force in
the assumption that because the great bulk of the profession have hitherto
spent their lives in a monotonous round of purely mechanical labor, there-
fore they must continue to do so in the future. We claim that the circle of
physiological and pathological sympathies existing between the mouth and
every portion of the economy demand first a general medical education, and
then special training, that the highest results in treatment may be secured."
The "Medical Times" did not see fit to make a reply to this editorial at the
time, but in 1875 this journal published a reply which appeared on page
(323) of the "Cosmos" of that year in which the "Times" quoted Dr. James
Truman as having said that there were from eight to eleven thousand persons
engaged in the practice of dentistry, who did not possess the degree of D. D. S.,
whose general intelligence tliere was no means of knowing, and whose attain-
ments probably did not go beyond the capacity for mechanical operations, and
a largo number of whom were not even experts in these: and in which Dr.
Tniman further fo
