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68 HISTOEY OF DENTAL SURGERY

is open to the inspection of tlie public. For many years this mu^ •• u, now
enlarged, has instituted professorships.
In the introductory preface of the "Surgical Works of John Hunter,"
published in London in 1835, edited by James F. Palmer, he is referred to as
"the greatest man in the combined character of physiologist and surgeon tha'
the whole annals of medicine can furnish."
The "Natural History of the Human Teeth" was written by Hunter .
1771, and in 1778 he published a monograph on the treatment of diseases o-
the teeth. It is said that from the proceeds of the publication of the "Natural
History of the Teeth," which came a short time before his marriage, he de-
rived the expenses that his wedding entailed upon him. The edition of his
works published in 1835, in so far as it applied to his treatise on the teeth,
is edited by Thomas Bell and annotated by him. He was at one time a
pupil of Hunter. In this preface Bell observes that : "At the period Hunter
wrote, dental surgery was perhaps lower than any department of professional
science or practice. The treatment of the teeth was still consigned to the
hands of the ignorant mechanics, whose knowledge was limited to the forcible
extraction of aching teeth, the manufacture of substitutes for those which
were lost, and some rude methods of filling the cavities produced by decay.
That this practice (dentistry), by connection with physiological and patho-
logical science, was improvable by such connection, should have early at-
tracted the attention of a man preeminently qualified for supplying such
deficiencies, whose labors, unparalleled as they are for their scientific im-
portance, are not less valual:)le for the immense influence they have since
exerted upon the practice both of medicine and of surgerv,_ might have been
anticipated. The peculiar character of his mind was too truly great to think
anv subjects unworthy of his anxious attention which involved the improve-
ment of the art of healing or the extension of all knowledge of Nature's
operations."
In his introduction to the treatise, John Hunter says:
"The importance of the teeth is such that they deserve our utmost atten-
tion as well with respect to the preservation of them when in a healthy
state as the methods of curing them when diseased. They require this atten-
tion, not only for the preservation of themselves as instruments useful to
the body, but also on account of other parts with which they are connected,
for diseases in the teeth are apt to produce diseases in the neighboring parts,
frequently of very serious consequences, as will evidently appear in the fol-
lowing treatise."