It is probably not amiss to depict a concep tion of the practice of medicine, and incident ally of dentistry, as it may be gathered from the study of the medical works written during the early centuries of the Christian era. The freeborn Roman looked upon the practice of medicine as a handicraft, the pursuit of which was not compatible with the dignity of a "civis Romanus.* The practice of medicine in Rome prior to its invasion by the better educated Greek physicians was carried on by slaves; the larger estates depended on their "servus medi cus,* a slave who had acquired some routine medical knowledge, or the ills of the subjects of the household were looked after by the patriarchal "pater familias.* Some of these latter representatives of lay medicine gathered together quite an extensive knowledge of the healing art, and their recorded experiences furnish some of the most valuable data to the medical historians. Celsus, Pliny and Cato are 'elucidative types of Roman lay practitioners, and incidentally are voluminous and fruitful litterateurs on this subject. To the cultured 'Romans, who were highly conscious of the blessings of personal hygiene, the demand for the services of some genius who would keep their masticating organ's in perfect condition was a matter of necessity. The works of med ical writers of this period are filled with in numerable recipes for tooth preparations. The mechanical side of dentistry, which by necessity must have been carried out by specialists, has received its ample share, as is testified by an excerpt from the famous Law of the XII Tables enacted 450 B.C., which contains the following paragraph: "Neither add any gold (to a corpse) ; if any one shall have teeth bound with gold, it shall be no offense to bury or burn him with it Numerous specimens of Roman and Etruscan dentistry have been found in burial-places. The great' satirist, Martial, has preserved the name of at least one dentist, Cancellius, "who has grown rich like a senator among the glands and belles dames, and who cures the tooth diseases; and how he can ex tract It is also of interest to note that in the epigrams of Martial many allusions are made to the teeth and their care. So we read, for instance: Base quid hoc dieam, quod dent tua basis myrrhara? How do I explain it that your kiss smells of Myrrh? Artificial teeth seem to have been quite fash ionable with the Roman dames, as the following would indicate: Dent.ibus atque wraith nee to pudet, uteria emtis; Quid facies oculo, Leelia? Non emitur.
Without shame you make show with bought teeth and hair; But what about the eye, Lactic can one buy this also? Specimens of Etruscan dentistry in form of bridges, crowns, bands, etc., are still preserved in the National Museum of Naples. With the exception of a few monographs the early liter ature of dentistry is found scattered among the various treatises on general medicine. In the large majority of instances these records are published by medical practitioners, although sometimes by laymen who themselves did not practice the art of dentistry. Prior to the ap pearance of the work of Fauchard, (Le Chiru gien (1728), who has been signifi cantly styled the "Restaurateur de la chirugie dentaire, dentistry is not entitled to the cog nomen of a "learned profession? In reality it constituted the handicraft of vagabonds who traversed the country from one end to the other practising medicine, dentistry, alchemy, chiro mancy and necromancy as occasion demanded, now and again interspersing these with a little pilfering. The professional mountebank who pre sented himself as a tooth-puller, barber, leech and theriac vender was a familiar figure in the market-places of the big cities or at the annual fairs of the smaller towns. The extraction of the aching tooth was incidentally an incentive for the sale of some tooth preparation or an amulet for the prevention of the occurrence of pain in the remaining teeth. The udentatores" or "deiatispices" of the Romans, the "cava denti" of the Italians, the "arracheur des dents" of the French, the "zahnbrecher" of the Germans, and the akindhart" of the English represented the bulk of our professional an cestors. The patron saint of dentistry, Saint Apollonia, was canonized in Rome about 300 'A.D. Being a Christian, Saint Apollonia was tortured by her persecutors by having her teeth, one by one, extracted, and finally suffered death upon the pyre. Her memory is com
memorated on 9 February of each year. Re mains of her skeleton arepreserved in the va rious churches of Rome, Naples, Cologne, Ant werp, Brussels and Quebec, and excellent pic tures of the saint by Guido Reni, Carlo Dolci, and others are found in Milan, Florence and other cities. The name of Saint Apollonia is frequently mentioned in prayers in the various prayer books of the Middle Ages, and is es pecially intended for the relief of toothache.
Prior to 1840 comparatively few import ant comniunie,ations on dental surgery had ap peared. The foremost literature of this time yvas published in France and England, and a few books of importance appeared in Germany. The United States was at this period princi pally concerned with the practical development of the new branch of the healing art, and, with the exception of the writings of Longbotham, E. Parmly, L. S. Parmly, Trenor, Fitch, Bost wick, Spooner, S. Brown, the Burdens and others, little was printed in relation to dentistry. Dental textbooks, if used at all, were imported from England, or translations of French works were published. Leonard Koecker, a practi tioner of international reputation, pictured the situation quite correctly when he stated, in 1826, that "in the United States, although little or nothing has been done in the way of pub lishing on the subject of dental surgery, yet I feel myself authorized to say that in no part of the world has this art obtained a more ele vated station.' No specific current dental lit erature was in existence at that time and com paratively few medical journals tried to dis seminate the progress of medical and, incident ally, dental knowledge. The fewjournals were seriously hindered in this laudable cause by the extreme difficulties of interchange on account of the very limited facilities of the postal service. The first dental periodical of this or any other country appeared in 1839 under the name of American Journal of Dental Science, and was published by E. Parmly, E. Baker and S. Brown. The first regularly or ganized dental society of any importance was the "American Society of Dental Surgeons? which was founded in New York on 18 Aug. 1840, with Horace H. Hayden as president. The birth of dentistry as a distinct and definite profession may be recorded simultaneously with the date of the incorporation of the first dental college of the world, the Baltimore Col lege of Dental Surgery, which received its charter in 1839. Its first session commenced in the following year, with a faculty composed of Horace A. Hayden, Chapin A. Harris, Thomas E. Bond and H. Willis Baxley. Medi cine and dentistry were from that year practi cally divorced, and, while dentistry in its early days depended very largely on medicine for its further development, it bases its fundamental studies at present on general biology exactly in the same manner as medicine, veterinary medicine, or any other branch of the healing art is forced to do. Among the earliest dental practitioners in the United States aside from those to whom we have referred should be men tioned Robert Woofendale, a student of Thomas Berdmore, dentist to His Majesty King George III, Josiah Flagg, James Ger dette, Edward Hudson and many others too numerous to record. The means of education and professional training of these men were ex tremely limited and they were forced to obtain their knowledge by being apprenticed to some practitioner who would usually extort a large fee for initiating the novice into the art of dental practice. As a consequence, the knowl edge thus gained at a considerable expense was usually jealously guarded and professional intercourse among practitioners was therefore a rare feature. A record concerning the more important events of the development of den tistry would be incomplete if the discovery of general anaesthesia were not mentioned, even if it is only en passant. To the dental profes sion of the United States belongs the honor of having introduced into surgery the first practical method of obtaining complete antes thesis. The discovery of anesthesia is the greatest boon ever bestowed on mankind for the relief of suffering. With the introduction of nitrous oxide as a general anesthetic in 1844 by Horace Wells, the stimulation for fur ther researches was initiated and the future de velopment of anesthesia was merely a se quence of this incentive.