The observations of these most distinguishing physiologists and teachers, support the view which has been taken respecting the education of the Dental Surgeon, from the time the College of Surgeons was in 1857 asked to establish a Dental department, up to the determination of the Dental curriculum by the Medical Council in 1879.

An education equal in degree, but different in kind to that of the General Surgeon—an education which embraces a knowledge of the general principles of Medicine and Surgery, and a special, precise, and practical knowledge of Dental Surgery, was asked and given, the degree of education progressing as the attendant circumstances allowed, up to its present advanced condition.

The place assigned by Dr. Michael Foster to topographical Anatomy in Medical education, will certainly hold good in the education of the Dental Surgeon. Physiology and Chemistry, subjects now inseparable and of surpassing interest, are equally necessary to the Special and General Surgeon.

The position of Medicine and Surgery is not quite parallel. The general principles of each must be thoroughly known, but it is not necessary that the Dental Surgeon should be practically acquainted with all the details that pertain to any other branch of either than that which he selects to practice. It is not needful that he should become a skilful midwife or oculist, or that he should be skilled in the treatment in any other class of diseases than those to the treatment of which he proposes to devote his life. For if he does acquire such detailed knowledge, it will, when no longer used, “fade like a raindrop upon a porous stone,” and the time devoted to the acquisition will have been wasted, and, perhaps, worse even than wasted, for the subject may have been studied at the cost of neglect of the practical study of his speciality. It does not admit of doubt that the high degree of manual skill, without which the professed dentist is but a shameless pretender, can be acquired best, perhaps can be fully acquired only during youth; that if the acquisition be put off till a medical education is completed, the golden opportunity will have been lost. Mr. Fawcett tells us that the blind may acquire manual skill sufficient to secure independence, but that it can be gained only during youth. The adult blind, he says, have a greatly diminished power of learning.

The time may come when the principles of Medicine and Surgery will be taught before their special application to any particular class of disease, and their modification resulting therefrom is entered upon. Till that time arrive, it will be in the interest of the Dental Surgeon to study with the utmost care the general principles and their application to his own speciality, and to acquire, while he can, a very full and perfect knowledge, practical, as well as scientific, of Dental Surgery, before he enters upon a detailed study of their application to any other branch or subject of Medicine or Surgery, the practice of which he does not propose to follow, and a trustworthy knowledge of which can not be retained or extended in the absence of continuous general practice.

The qualified surgeon who has devoted himself to the practice of dentistry, may be legally qualified to treat any and every kind of case, but would he be morally right in undertaking the treatment of a case, say of fever or of stone? all his knowledge of which diseases lies in a misty memory of facts brought before his notice, and studied for a pass examination in long past student days. As a matter of fact, the dental surgeon of necessity limits his practice to his speciality, and the general surgeon as a further fact, where selection is possible, declines to take Dental cases, though legally entitled so to do. In the absence of special training, he cannot be expected to possess the special knowledge requisite to successful treatment, and to add the Dental to the over loaded Medical curriculum, would be to greatly increase the rejections which, in the case of the College of Surgeons, have already risen to the formidable amount of upwards of thirty per cent. of the candidates for diplomas. Hence it is that Dr. Michael Foster, in asking for more physiology, asks for less topographical anatomy.

The Dental curriculum requires for its honest fulfilment, the whole of the assigned four years, and more must not be attempted in the same four years, for to repeat the words of Professor Burdon-Sanderson,—“The precious years which immediately precede a man’s entry on professional duty, are far too valuable to be wasted in learning anything he does not intend to retain,” to which may be added, or which his subsequent occupation will not allow him to retain. If then more medical knowledge is required of the student than is embraced in the dental curriculum, more time must be given for its acquisition.

Transplantation and Replantation.

(Continued from page 425.)

At the period when transplantation was systematically performed, the operators kept themselves supplied with an assortment of dried teeth, i.e., sound teeth, obtained generally from the dead subject, to make use of in case the tooth to be transplanted should not prove adaptable to its new abode. The process is not spoken favourably of, as the results were mostly unsatisfactory, but at times such teeth became perfectly firm, and even resisted the greatest efforts at their removal. We can hardly for one moment suppose that teeth in the condition these were could have ever become attached to a living alveolo-dental membrane, and the difficulty of accounting for this firmness would have been great indeed, had it not been already solved for us. In Langenbeck’s Archiv. für Chirurgie, vol. iv., is a paper on “The Replantation and Transplantation of Teeth,” by Dr. A. Mitscherlich, which deserves to be better known, and which, apparently, cannot have come under the observation of those who recently contributed to the Lancet on the subject, the excuse for which is less, since it has been translated into English.[[2]] The author, in addition to much interesting and original matter, records the following experiment. In the upper jaw of a dog of a year old, Dr. Mitscherlich inserted into the socket of an incisor he had removed, a similar tooth taken from a dog’s skull, and which he retained in situ by means of a silver wire passed through a hole in the tooth, and a hole bored through the alveolar process of the jaw. “After six weeks the dog was killed, having been given during the last few days three grains of picronitrate of potash three times a day; the carotids were immediately injected. The muscles, like the gums, were coloured yellow: neither, however, in the implanted tooth nor in the sound ones was any alteration of colour perceptible. The silver wire was porous, and no longer held the tooth; it was removed. The tooth was quite firmly seated, and could not be moved in the least by the fingers. The gums, as in the remaining teeth, were accurately applied both to the alveolar process and also to the tooth itself, and nowhere could any alteration be found in it. The tooth was sawn through lengthways, together with the upper jaw, with a fine saw, so that the pulp cavity was laid bare in its whole extent. The latter was only filled with a little detritus, and no trace of the pulp was discoverable; none of the injection, too, had been forced into the cavity. The tooth was everywhere most intimately connected with the surrounding parts, and suppuration showed itself nowhere. Of the periosteum, on the other hand, there were only in a few places some small remains discoverable. On the posterior surface of the tooth two small cavities were visible; the larger of which lay more towards the point of the fang, and extended to the pulp cavity; they were filled with a soft substance, and their walls appeared roundish. These appearances were entirely confirmed by microscopical examination, inasmuch as only in a few places, especially on the anterior surface of the tooth, were traces of the periosteum to be demonstrated; where this was absent the tooth was eaten away, and its absorption had proceeded in such a manner, that a multitude of globular elements appeared on the section, resembling the fragments which we find in ivory pegs which have been bored into bones, and retained in them a considerable time; in the two above-mentioned cavities the absorption had proceeded farther and farther, and had at last attained its above-mentioned great extent. The cementum could still be demonstrated in certain places, it was, however, absorbed in the greatest part of its extent. In the cavities of the tooth substance, masses of bone were embedded, they were applied to the walls of the cavities without any kind of intermediate substance, and so held the tooth with such extraordinary firmness. This osseous deposit, which was directly connected with the alveolar processes, was freely traversed with blood vessels, which sometimes extended themselves close up to the tooth substance. It was also so fully developed, that the process had to be looked upon as fully accomplished, and therefore, a later exfoliation of the tooth was not to be expected. The dentine itself showed nothing abnormal.”