“In this town, those who intend to become dentists are now obliged to undergo an examination, but although the examiners be most learned and well versed in all the other parts of surgery, I think, if I may be allowed to express my opinion, that as they do not ordinarily themselves practise dental surgery, it would not be amiss on these occasions to admit an able and experienced dentist, who might sound the aspirant as to the difficulties which have come before him in the course of the long practice of his art, and who could communicate to them the means of surmounting them. In this way one would not have to acknowledge that the attainment of the greater part of dental experts[409] is below mediocrity.
“To supply this want of instruction it would have been of great use if some able dentist, for example the late Monsieur Carmeline, who, in his day, practised with general applause, had made us acquainted with his mode of operating and with the knowledge acquired through the successful treatment of a great number of important cases.
“What this celebrated surgeon-dentist has not done, I today dare to undertake. I shall at least afford an example of what he might have done with greater erudition and better success.
“From my youth I was destined to the surgical profession; the other arts I have practised[410] have never made me lose sight of it. I was the disciple of Alexandre Poteleret, surgeon-in-chief to His Majesty’s ships, who had great experience in diseases of the mouth. To him I owe the first rudiments of the knowledge I have acquired in the surgical speciality I practise, and the progress I made under this able man gave me the emulation that has led me to further important discoveries. I have collected among different writers what seemed to me most reliable. I have frequently discussed these matters with the ablest surgeons and doctors of my acquaintance, and have neglected nothing in order to profit by their counsels and by their ideas.
“The experience which I have acquired during an uninterrupted practice of more than forty years has led me insensibly to the acquirement of further knowledge and to the modification of what seemed to me defective in my earlier ideas. I offer to the public the results of my labors and of my studies, hoping that they may be of some use to those who wish to exercise the profession of surgeon-dentist.”
The reason why dentists before the time of Fauchard published hardly anything concerning their art, was perhaps out of a sentiment of jealousy, which rendered them (that is, the best of the profession and therefore the ones most capable of writing) but little disposed to make known to others the results of their studies and of their experience, lest the fruits of their long labors should be utilized by others and they themselves be materially damaged by competition. That this sentiment of jealous egotism really existed in many dentists may be, in a certain manner, deduced from a few words of Fauchard himself, who, although he has the very great merit of breaking with mean, old-world prejudices, nevertheless expresses the prevalent idea of the time, consisting in the belief that every artificer, every inventor, had not only the right, but also the duty of surrounding his discoveries with secrecy and mystery. These are the words in which, making known a certain improvement in dental prosthesis invented by him, he at the same time expressed his conviction that by so doing he is acting against his own interests:
“I have perfected and also invented several artificial pieces both for substituting a part of the teeth and for remedying their entire loss, and these pieces substitute them so well that they serve perfectly for the same uses as the natural teeth. To the prejudice of my own interests I now give the most exact description possible of them.”
Now, although a man of elevated mind, such as Fauchard, may have been capable of sacrificing his material interests to higher aims, it is not, however, to be wondered at, taking also into consideration the lesser degree of culture and of professional ability of his predecessors, that none among them should have been found sufficiently disinterested to publish the results of their particular studies and experience, besides all those technical details which according to the ideas of that time constituted the secrets of the profession.
In the course of this history, we have seen that the dental art was practised from the most remote times and in the most various countries, remaining, notwithstanding, for centuries in an embryonal condition. It was toward the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century that, in the midst of the highly advanced civilization of the great French capital, it attained a high degree of development, entitling it to be considered a special branch of the medical art.
It would, therefore, be wrong to believe that the dental art was created, for the most part, by Fauchard, and one clearly perceives, from the perusal of his work, that although he made most important contributions to this specialty, which he cultivated with passion, nevertheless, the greater part of the things therein treated of were already known before his time, although no reference to them is to be found in previous works; and this for the reasons we have already suggested. The highest merit of Fauchard consists, still more than in his inventions and improvements, in his having most ably collected and incorporated in a single work the whole doctrine of dental art, theoretical as well as practical, thus setting in full light the importance of the specialty, and giving it a solid scientific basis.