The Progress of Dental Education. Bulletin, 1925, No. 39

N

29

Medical Education; Surgery; Apprenticeships; Foreign Countries; Dentistry; Dental Schools; Medical Schools; Educational History

Dentistry has evolved from medicine and more especially from the surgical aspect of what is now called medicine. Until the sixteenth century, physic and surgery were separate professions and what we now call dentistry was a part of surgery rather than of physic. For centuries physic was a calling of greater dignity than surgery. Since the major influence in modern medicine has been physic rather than surgery, this legendary relation to some extent accounts for the fact that dentistry, since its establishment as a separate profession has not been acknowledged to be on a professional parity with medicine. Dental education in both Europe and America was a part of medical education until 1840, but the dental features in medical education were only incidental, going little beyond some instruction on extraction. No sustained course of lectures on dental subjects was given in any medical school until 1837 and then in only one school. The better dentists were men who, following a medical education had served an apprenticeship under a preceptor who was a dental practitioner before they specialized in dentistry. With the establishment of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1840, separation of dentistry from medicine began and the era of distinct institutional education in dentistry inaugurated the type of training in which the mechanical aspect of dental training gradually supplanted the basic medical phase. However, training through apprenticeship either instead of the dental school course of supplementary to it remained an important avenue of entrance to dentistry for several decades. [Best copy available has been provided.]

ERIC

2013

ED540814