From Pulling Teeth to Promoting Oral Health. Pharmacy and Dentistry 1815-2015.

Two hundred years ago the occupational boundaries between different medical practitioners were blurred and unspecified, with many practicing in several fields. However the 1815 Apothecaries Act had a major impact on both the emerging pharmaceutical and dental professions. The 1878 and 1921 Dentists Acts enabled pharmacists who did some dentistry to continue practicing dentistry. Changes proposed by the British Dental Association (BDA) resulted in the formation of a Chemists Dental Association in 1910 to defend the interests of this group, which continued in existence until 1951. This paper explores the changing relationship between chemists and dentists from the early nineteenth century through to the early twenty-first century. Sources used include the published work of both dental and pharmaceutical historians, documentary sources, and quotations from oral history interviews.

Once upon a time--starting up a dental practice in the 1980s.

A description of how a dentist could establish a practice in the UK in the 1980s.

Cultivating a "chairside manner": dental hypnosis, patient management psychology, and the origins of behavioral dentistry in America, 1890-1910.

Discussions regarding the use of hypnotism in dentistry featured prominently in dental journals and society proceedings during the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Many dentists used hypnotic suggestion either as the sole anesthetic for extractions or in conjunction with local and general anesthetics for excavation and cavity filling. With the heralding of humanitarian dentistry and improved local anesthesia around 1905, a number of dentists advocated using suggestion psychology to calm nervous patients and increase their comfort and satisfaction levels while undergoing dental procedures. The practice of hypnotic suggestion with local and general anesthesia in providing patients with increasingly painless procedures constituted the earliest variety of behavioral dentistry, a discipline not fully developed until the closing decades of the twentieth century. Hypnosis and suggestion became driving forces for psychological applications in the formative years of behavioral dentistry.

[In memoriam Vilmos Vajna: to commemorate his 155th birthday]. / Vajna Vilmos feltaláló fogorvos emlékére, születésének 155. évfordulóján.

Vilmos Vajna was born in Transylvania. His medical education was completed at Franz Joseph University of Arts and Sciences in Kolozsvár. He studied dental sciences in Vienna and Pest. After returning to Kolozsvár he obtained his habilitation ("venia legendi") and then lectured dentistry at this university. After finishing his academic carrier he moved to Budapest in 1895. While he practiced dentistry in his private office he made several technical innovations, constructed new instruments, and invented new technologies. He was an active member of the public life of the dental community.

Revisitando as origens da "arte dentária": o processo histórico e o modelo hegemônico de prática odontológica em análise / Revisiting the origins of \"dentistry\": the historical process and the hegemonic model of dental practice in analysis

Este artigo tem como objetivo principal revisar e descrever acontecimentos intrínsecos à gênese da profissão de cirurgião-dentista, elucidando dimensões e desdobramentos atuais em torno da ‘Arte Dentária’. Busca-se, com isso, refletir sobre limites e avanços da práxis odontológica e, ao mesmo tempo, questionar alguns de seus aspectos que se interpõem como dificultadores para a consolidação de uma atenção em saúde pautada em princípios de eqüidade, de humanização e de integralidade. O texto, de caráter informativo-descritivo, analisa eventos do processo histórico da Odontologia no ocidente e no Brasil, especificamente. Além disso, problematiza dimensões do modelo hegemônico de prática odontológica, no cenário nacional atual, evidenciando ‘nós críticos’, os quais precisam, com certa urgência, ser percebidos, analisados e enfrentados pela classe odontológica, uma vez que alguns deles se caracterizam como dilemas que acompanham a profissão desde sua origem. A superação de tais situações dilemáticas torna-se imprescindível para a construção de nova postura no cuidado em saúde bucal e para que a Odontologia, possa, de fato, alcançar os seus objetivos enquanto profissão.

This article’s main objective is to revise and describe the happenings that are intrinsic to the genesis of the dental surgeon profession, elucidating up-to-date dimensions and unfoldments that surround the ‘Dental Art’. With that, it is intended to reflect about the limitations and advancements of the dental praxis, questioning, at the same time, any aspects that interpose as difficulties to the consolidation of a health attention based on the principles of equity, humanization and integrality in health. The text, one of descriptive informative character, analyses events of dentistry’s historical process in the occident and in Brazil specifically. Furthermore, it problematizes dimensions of the hegemonic modelof dental practice, in the current national scenario, highlighting “critical knots”, which have to be noticed, analyzed and confronted by the profession with certain urgency, as some of them are characterized as dilemmas that have come along with the profession since its beginning. The overcome of such dilemmatic situations becomes mandatory for the construction of a new posture on oral health and care and so that Dentistry can truly reach its objectives as a profession.

Focus Awards 2001.

In the last of a series of five articles in which we look at each of the practice finalists from the Focus Awards 2001, we visit 68 The Dental Practice in Leeds, West Yorkshire.

Ethics: how the Apothecaries Act of 1815 shaped the dental profession. Part 1. The Apothecaries and the emergence of the profession of dentistry.

The Apothecaries Act of 1815, (revised by the Act of 1825) has been credited with being the most important forward step in the education of the general medical profession in the nineteenth century, although a closely argued revisionist view of its significance by S W F Holloway makes clear his view that it was also a successful and deeply reactionary political move by the physicians to emasculate a rival group growing rapidly in numbers and power. This paper demonstrates that the Act also created a distance between the true dentists and others, like the chemists and druggists, who carried out dental functions. By so doing the Act defined the social identity of the profession of dentistry, in its numbers, status, nineteenth century reform and pattern of education. The paper proposes the apothecary/general medical practitioner as a social as well as ethical role model for the general dental practitioner.

Looking back--Dean's address.

General dental practitioners have been part of The Royal College of Surgeons of England since the LDS RCS examinations in 1860. For 87 years, it was the general dentists who were part of the College. Later, the political necessity of introducing hospital dentists to the National Health Service changed the ethos for dentists with the formation of the Faculty of Dental Surgery in 1947. Secondary care dentists became entrenched within The College at the expense of the majority of those who practiced dentistry to the same level as secondary care dentists. It took a further 45 years before general practitioners could return to their home. The Faculty of General Dental Practitioners (UK), within a short space of time, has become the largest Faculty for dentists within any of the Royal Colleges. This article includes excerpts from the Dean's address at the Ceremony of Presentation of Diplomats held on 3rd March 2001 (see page 75). It unveils the accidents of history which formulated a Royal College, the perseverance of committed dentists which took them into the fold of The College. It describes the beginning of the Faculty of Dental Surgery and unravels the story of the Advisory Board in General Dental Practice which later became the Faculty of General Dental Practitioners (UK). The next article 'Looking Forwards' will describe a way forward for this Faculty, which has grown up all too quickly in a rapidly changing world.