Page 20 - My FlipBook

8 WORLD S HISTORY AND

Dr. Cigrand, in his recently published interesting work, "The
Mise, Fall and Revival of Dental Prosthesis," says, regarding
those first known practitioners in America:
"Such, in brief, is the sketch of the pioneers of the profession
in this country. Our study of these characters demonstrates that
the art and science was nurtured by noble students; that all
through the primitive years of dentistry there have been men of
education and mechanical ingenuity, wielding a controlling
power, and who had a just appreciation of the needs of dental
practitioners.
"From the time of Dr. Greenwood's successful appliance for
Gen. George Washington, until 1820, successors from Europe and
adoption of the profession by native-born Americans greatly
increased the number of dentists. The darkness which shrouded
scientific dentistry in the seventeenth century was now dispelled,
and the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the develop-
ment of a new political life in the American empire, saw dentistry
given a professional and social standing, worthy of all its impor-
tance in alleviating the woes of the human family."