Page 265 - My FlipBook

REVIEW OF DENTISTRY. 249

art shall be protected against empirics and charlatans? Is it pos-
sible, one continued, to establish a fair distinction between the
exercise of the profession of dentistry, reduced to the extraction,
and treatment of the diseases proper of the teeth and the exer-
cise of that branch of medicine or surgery which treats the
diseases of the mouth? Is there not a connection between
diseases of teeth which need to be extracted, and diseases of the
mouth of which the former are consequences? Before extraction
is it not indispensable to judge if extraction is necessary; that is,
whether there exists some special disease of the mouth? And
the very act of extracting teeth, must not that also be executed
in a different way, according to the conformation, disposition and
temperament of the subject?
11 "
I believe," said Dr. Reveille-Parise, that the profession of
dentistry, worthily and legitimately exercised, demands extensive
and profound knowledge, regarding the causes of diseases of the
teeth, their effects and the means of struggling with the same;
that the operations involved are founded on the same basis and
governed by the same general medical systems as those of other
parts of the body; that the scientific and theoretical part neces-
sarily must be allied with manual surgery. Consequently, my
personal opinion is that the profession of dentistry ought to be
considered as one of the branches of medicine, and that it is im-
possible to separate it therefrom, without dissolving the unity,
and the established principles of the medical art."
Such was the opinion of authors and interpreters of the law
of Ventose, of the year XI. And still the dentists continued
to practice, altogether disregarding the Medical Faculty. Dent-
istry was practiced freely and without restraint; everyone who so
wished established himself as a dentist. Soon, however, the
question arose from the domain of speculation to that of the

courts of justice. It was, in 1827, carried to the Supreme Court,
during a suit against a woman exercising, exclusively, in some
part of the country, the profession of a dentist. She had on her
business cards styled herself as a dentist and added that she
neither practiced medicine nor surgery. The Appellate Court
(" la Cour de Cassation") in a decree dated February 23, 1827,
decided, on the ground "that the law of Ventose, XL, had not re-
established the provisions of Article 126, of the Edict of 1768, and
as said law only concerned those who wished to practice the
healing art in its entireness, that such person, who pretended to