Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery - Dental Columbian Yearbook (New York, NY)

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which must be devoted to the technical training of a dentist. The general biological and medical background is developed as fully as may be con- sistent with the special requirements. Here lies a regrettable hiatus between the two schools, which time we hope will lessen or remove. Should the prevention of dental caries become an. established procedure comparable to the prevention of typhoid or smallpox, then may we hope to abandon filling operations and thus release the time occupied by that group of exacting techniques. While making due allowance, however, for the difficulties inherent to the growth of a new branch of medical science, let us consider what has been done and how we stand today as professional men. Prophecy, being both cheap and risky, is set aside in what I should like to say. Dentistry, forty years ago, was taught and practised as an isolated profession. An academic picture of the human body and of the biologic processes was an undergraduate requirement; but that was left behind with college days. The practitioner went about the treatment of diseased teeth and their supporting tissues in accordance with a highly developed me- chanical technique and an empirical and restricted system of therapy which reckoned only with local conditions, or with but slight regard for systemic implications. Such was the knowledge of the day. The familiar story of growth from that point of view to our present realization of what dental disease or health mean to the entire human organism need not be recited here. We now know that the competent dental practitioner must be a man of first-rate ability, who is trained in a wider diversity of knowledge and skills than the general medical man. His peculiar training makes him indeed a specialist; but in ways not required in the other medical specialties. He must have the digital skill of the surgeon, but the details of a foil filling or of reaming a root canal are more exacting and delicate than the work of the surgeon. He must have mechanical skill and a knowledge of en- gineering principles far beyond that of other specialists. He must be a creative artist, having an innate sense of esthetic principles — of color and form — a field quite remote from other medical work. Since dental caries is reckoned the most prevalent of human ailments, and the crippling effect of diseased teeth or the loss of teeth is universally recognized and acknowledged; since but twenty-five percent of the people of the United States at present receive dental treatment — and this country is far ahead of all others in such service — the magnitude of the opportunity and responsibility placed in the hands of the dental graduate today are very greai and very serious. We of this younger branch of the ancient art of healing have work of the first importance on our hands. Let us hope that a future historian will have good reason to place in the record the work of members of this, our graduating class of nineteen thirty-eight. Twenty

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Our Profession WILLIAM B. DUNNING, D.D.S.. Professor of Dentistry Next to choosing a wife, the choice of a career, in times of peace, is usually the most important decision which confronts a young man. That is, if he is to have any choice. Some of us do what we must do, in this world, and every now and then Fate guides our steps in ways better than our know- ing; nevertheless, assuming all else to be equal, a choice is desirable. Be- ing a problem of the first moment, it holds an appealing interest for us all. Why do men choose so variously? Because of infinite variations in birth, temperament, upbringing, tradition and environment. What is one man ' s meat is another man ' s poison. But certain broad lines may be drawn, in this matter of choice. Perhaps it may be said in a general way that most men are suited to industrial or business life rather than the highly special callings known as professions. In the first, a sound elementary, high school and college edu- cation is desirable, but the requirements are by no means fixed, for many men who have achieved eminence in the commercial world began with scanty formal training. We must honor them for a native capacity to learn from the buffets of life. At fifty, such men are wise in large matters; they are active and useful citizens. Their working years have been spent in ro- bust competition with business rivals, which on the whole is a healthy state for their communities and for themselves. They may cultivate many phil- anthropic interests, but the habit of a lifetime puts the building of a personal fortune as the first consideration. The cast of mind which makes the professional man is different in many essentials, except for that common ground of open-mindedness and good sense which should govern all men. In the ancient and formal professions — pre-eminently medicine and the ministry — there is need not only for high intellectual and scholarly equipment but also for moral and spiritual qualities which must underlie character as do primitive waterways beneath a busy city. By this is meant only a shift in emphasis. No reflection is intended upon the idealism of the business man, but it is the life ' s work of the doctor to be concerned directly and intimately with the relief of suffering and the health and personal welfare of other human beings. Hence the outgiving, impersonal attitude is basic with the medical man; with him the earning of a living, while not forgotten, is of secondary concern, and is often, in the day ' s work, set aside. In the dental division of the healing art, the grand essentials are the same. In New York State and in an increasing number of other States, the school, pre-dental and professional college years are the same as for the medical curriculum. While the two institutions are steadily growing nearer in a common purpose, the actual merging of dental with medical schools has not been found to be practicable because of the large amounts of time Nineteen

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MOSES DIAMOND D.D.S. Assoc. Prof, of Dentistry Dental Anatomy JACOB ERDREICH D.M.D. Assist, in Dentistry HERBERT D. AYERS, A.B., D.D.S. Assist, in Dentistry :harles f. bodecker D.D.S. Professor of Dentistry Oral Histology I EDMUND APPLEBAUM D.D.S. Assist. Prof, of Dentistry 9 WILLIAM LEFKOWITZ D.D.S. Assistant in Dentistry