Called upon at short notice to welcome you here, and to offer remarks of general professional interest, it occurs to me to be retrospective for awhile and to consider the steps by which that which was once an exceedingly crude art has been developed until now it is an exact science. In other words, I would invite your attention, for a time, to the history of dentistry. At a time even before our combined art and science had a definite history we find that gold was used among the Egyptians for the purpose both of filling teeth and of supporting and directing them. In the bodies of many Egyptian mummies, especially of the higher class, there have been found teeth filled with gold or with wood which was covered with gold. It is known, also, that the Hindoos and Egyptians inserted artificial teeth and that some of these were made of wood, often covered with gold, and held in place by gold or silver bands and wires. Herodotus, who traveled so extensively in Egypt and wrote most entertainingly of his travels, has noted the division of medicine among the Egyptians into special branches and the existence of physicians, each of whom applied himself to one disease and not to more. "Some," said he, "are for the eyes, others for the head, others for the teeth, and others for internal disorders."
It is known, also, that about 300 B.C. Erasistratus deposited in the temple of the Delphian Apollo an odontogogue, or tooth-forceps, made of lead, intimating thereby that only those teeth should be drawn which were loose enough to be extracted with such an instrument.
Celsus, who was a contemporary of Christ and of Cæsar, was the first to recommend the use of a file within the mouth for the purpose of removing irritating edges and points of teeth. He also recommended bursting hollow teeth by putting into them pepper-corns, which should absorb moisture, swell, and thus break the teeth in pieces. He also recommended to take particular pains to try to shake or manipulate teeth loose before extracting them.
Galen, about 150 A.D., taught that teeth were true bones and that the canine teeth should be called "eye" teeth, because they were supplied by a branch of the optic nerve. Aëtius, 300 A.D., apparently discovered the foramina at the roots of the teeth through which the nerves enter.
In Rome false teeth and sets of teeth constructed of ivory and fastened with gold wire existed as early as the Laws of the XII Tables, and before the days of Roman civilization it is known that the Etruscans were skilled in manipulation of gold within the mouth, while your dean has described and has, I believe, in his possession beautiful examples of Etruscan work of this kind.
Among the Arabs, after the Arabian domination of the then civilized world, attention was paid to the teeth, although this was considered a very inferior part of the physician's work. Among these Arabians much later, and in spite of their study of Greek writers and their translations from the Greek, there may still be met such passages as this from Garriopontus, 1045 A.D.: "On the island of Delphi a painful molar tooth, which was extracted by an inexperienced physician, occasioned the death of a philosopher, for the marrow of the tooth, which originates from the brain, ran down into the lungs and killed that philosopher." For all that I know, this is the first record of a death after extraction of a tooth. Albucassis, 1100 A.D., gave directions for replacing lost teeth by natural or ivory substitutes. For centuries extraction of teeth had been and was considered a critical and dangerous operation, although itinerant quacks drew them without hesitation.
The Roman poets and satirists made many allusions, in their day, to the teeth and to operations performed upon them.
During the Middle Ages the most celebrated medical school that the world ever saw was founded at Saleraum, and was for several centuries the headquarters to which resorted men who desired to study medicine and patients from all parts of the world who desired to be cured of various diseases. It was a favorite stopping-place for crusaders on their way to and from the Orient, and history relates many interesting episodes pertaining to such visits. Under the influence of this school dentistry was more or less cultivated by those who practiced surgery. Bruno, of Langoburo (about 1250), mentions various operations upon the teeth and the antrum, although that was nearly four hundred years before Highmore carefully described this cavity. Johannes Arculanus (Giovanni d'Arcoli), in the fifteenth century, filled teeth with gold. I must digress for a moment to speak of another suggestion of Arculanus's. You know that quite recently the use of the magnet has once more come into vogue among oculists for the removal of foreign particles of iron or steel from the anterior chamber or the globe of the eye. It was Arculanus who, some five hundred years ago, suggested extraction of iron splinters from the eye by means of the attraction of amber electrified by friction. (For School of Salernum see page 72.)
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the French surgeons, especially Dionis and Verduc, made many practical contributions to dentistry. In 1728 Fauchard wrote in Paris the first complete work on dentistry,—Le Chirurgien Dentiste, ou Traité des Dents. Auzebi, of Lyons, wrote another. Le Cluse first mentioned the English turnkey for extraction. Jourdain introduced a number of new and appropriate instruments and new forms of artificial teeth. Bourdet, dentist to the king, made artificial palates. Porcelain teeth were first introduced in France in 1774.
Among the Germans cosmetic dentistry, though still the favorite field of charlatans, was greatly cultivated. Serré wrote a treatise on Toothache in the Fair Sex During Pregnancy, but the first public dental clinic in Germany was not established until 1855, by Professor Albrecht, and in Vienna. It has been in Vienna, among the Germans, that dentistry has been in time past most honored, and was taught when it was scarcely recognized in the other German universities. Private dental institutions were also first established in Vienna.