Introductory Lecture to Course on Dental Mechanics.
By Dr. J. WALKER.
Gentlemen,—The authorities of the Dental Hospital of London have entrusted to me the heavy responsibility of lecturing on Dental Mechanics for this present Session of 1880 and 1881. I have undertaken this post with many misgivings; the subject is so wide and comprehensive, the study so important to you now, and the effect of good or bad teaching will so deeply affect your whole life, that I might well have hesitated before finally accepting the duties that will now devolve upon me.
I have taken a great interest in this Hospital and School from its early foundation, when the pupils were few, and the School and Hospital had, so to speak, to win its spurs; but in passing, I may here remark that that small class of students, then a new feature in London life, by their diligence, learning and conduct, have established throughout the country a name and reputation that you will have to perpetuate. It was by the combined efforts of the whole profession, and by the fact that its senior members were able to point back to so many successful students of this School and Hospital, now earnest practitioners in nearly every large town of the British Isles, that the leaders of our department of Surgery were enabled to bring this special branch before the notice of Parliament, and obtain a Bill which now governs the method and extent of the classes and hospital practice of all our schools.
As your lecturer, I may perhaps without egotism mention that I was one of the six gentlemen appointed as the first Assistant Dental Surgeons to this Hospital, while it was struggling through its first year of active life. I remained at my post nearly ten years, until driven by increasing practice to relinquish the work, then, as now, carried on in your Hospital. It is the knowledge and experience I then gained, and the lessons I have since learnt as the result of treatment in private practice, that I have now to offer you—many failures and some successes, many abortive schemes, and some inventions that have stood the test of time.
My best thanks are due to the Managing Committee of this Hospital, for electing me to be the colleague of such men as Alfred Coleman, C. S. Tomes, and D. Lewis.
Gentlemen, I am fully conscious of the honour, and will do my best, if health and strength are given me, to redeem in part the loss you have sustained in the resignation of your late teacher, Mr. James Smith Turner. I know that you and your companions in hospital practice held him in high esteem. He has been a true friend to the London Dental School. He had become a ripe and experienced teacher, one fully alive to the best manner of treating his subject, passing by what the student might gain for himself from books, to dwell upon those details that a man of his experience could so fully grasp. But much as we miss him, we may yet congratulate ourselves that we have not to mourn over the death of so good and faithful a friend. He is now as actively at work in another sphere of Dental life; he is even working harder than ever in perfecting the work that has so prospered in the hands of Messrs. Tomes and Turner. He is consolidating the Dental Act of 1878, making every effort to render the Register of 1881 as perfect as may be, and to raise the standard of Dental Education throughout Great Britain. That the number of Dental Schools may be equal to what is now demanded by students, the schools be sound in teaching power, the men elected as teachers be conscientious in their newly appointed work, that full and complete courses on each Dental subject be delivered—these are a few items of his daily work. The end and object of his endeavours is that the students in the various schools may gather wider stores of knowledge during their curriculum, so that the various examining bodies may see their way to enforce a higher standard of examination than is now enforced to obtain the L.D.S. Diploma, and the coveted power of registration.
Those gentlemen who were members of Mr. Turner’s class last year will join with me in wishing him long life and energy to complete his self-imposed task.
To come to the special subject of my lecture. At the risk of provoking the well-known retort of “nothing like leather,” I venture to assert that no man can ever prove himself a good Dental Surgeon unless he is a skilled artist in Dental Mechanics. To kindle a spark of my own enthusiasm for the subject, to fan that spark into a flame that shall burn brighter and brighter in your life until you lay down the file and the engraver, with a sense that you have done some good work in the world, is at once my endeavour and my duty. A painter or sculptor of eminence in his profession is frequently the leader in the fashionable world, he is feasted by the city guilds, his company is sought by the rich and noble, he has the entrée to the literary circles of every capital, yet the work of the artist is, at best, but to reproduce a faint imitation of nature in cold marble or on inanimate canvass. The subjects of your handiwork will be full of life and animation.
What is the necessary training for such accomplishments? A full and perfect realization of all the forms of human beauty, and of woman’s beauty in particular. Why do I dwell so much on the complete form of beauty? Because no face can be perfect in beauty, unless its features each and all are in harmony. The teeth have a peculiarly marked position in relation to the features: one missing link in the circle will attract attention and mar the harmony of an otherwise lovely face, like a false chord in music.