The principles and practice of dentistry : including anatomy, physiology, pathology, therapeutics, dental surgery and mechanism / by Chapin A. Harris.

Harris, Chapin A. (Chapin Aaron), 1806-1860.

Date:: 1882

Credit: The principles and practice of dentistry : including anatomy, physiology, pathology, therapeutics, dental surgery and mechanism / by Chapin A. Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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$European systems seek to make experts of students, Ameri- can systems are content to make tliem experimenters. The Old-world regards three or four years of extra study a small matter, compared with the lives and welfare of the community: the ^STew-world considers any risk preferable to such delay in entering upon the practical duties of life. The Therapeutics of dentistry, unlike its anatomy, physiology and pathology, dilfers from that taught in the medical schools. It is Medical, Surgical and Prosthetic. In so far as it is a direc- tion of medical science to the prevention, modification or re- moval, by medicinal and hygienic remedies, of the causes and etfeets of disease in the dental organs, it forms part of a phy- sician's practice, just as does the treatment of cerebral, cardiac, or pulmonary disease. In so far as it is an application of sur- gical skill to the extraction of teeth, the removal of tumors, to the treatment of fractures or to staphyloraphy, it is simply Oral surgery, invohdng onl}^ such knowledge and sldll in the use of instruments as every surgeon must possess. But dental thera- peutics includes a class of operations not taught in medical schools and not practised in the offices of physicians or sur- geons : which, for their successful performance, require sur- roundings and appliances such as no other class of operations call for; demanding also an amount of time and special expe- rience, which it IS impossible for the general surgeon to devote to any one part of the bod3\ Hence, by universal consent, this branch of therapeutics, under the name of Dental Surgery, is assigned to a special clas^ of practitioners, who, like the oculist and obstetrician, perfect their art by limiting the sphere of its duties. The prevailing and distinguishing feature of dental therapeu- tics IS Prosthetics — the art of replacement: replacement of dental sfinicture, in such manner and with such material as shall prevent further action of the destructive agencies; replacement of dental organs, by substitutes which shall physiologically re- store impairment of function and aesthetically restore the nat- ural exi^ression of the face. The medical therapeutics and oral surgery of dentistry are insuflicient to establish it as a distinct branch of medical art; whilst the operations of filing and regu- lating the teeth form a small proportion of its specific duties. It owes its extent to the universal liability of the teeth to decay$