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

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MAURICE J. HICKEY, D.M.D., M.D. Associate Dean of the Faculty of Medicine for Dental and Oral Surgery; Executive Officer, Department of Dentistry; Professor of Oral Surgery

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GRAYSON KIRK, PH.D., LL.D. President of the University WILLARD COLE RAPPLEYE, A.M., M.D., SC.D. Vice-President of the University in Charge of Medical Affairs; Dean of the Faculty of Medicine

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The Bicentennial, the Medical Center and Dentistry L. Laszlo Schwartz, D.D.S. An anniversary is not only a time for evaluat- ing the record of the past. It serves a greater pur- pose if it is a time for stocktaking with a view to the future. Institutions, whether small or great, never stand still for any length of time. They move forward or they slip backward. Such a mo- tion may at times seem imperceptible but it is present nonetheless. It is, therefore, most impor- tant that we try at times such as this to estimate what we would hope to accomplish in the next twenty-five years, to assess our obstacles and diffi- culties and to take inventory of our assets. A ship seldom reaches its harbor by drifting. These words, spoken by President Kirk at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, apply to the School of Dental and Oral Surgery and the profession of dentistry. Even a cursory examination of dentistry today shows that, in principle, its practices are ancient in origin. They arose from two sources during antiquity: one technical, the other scientific. The first had its beginnings among the Phoenician and Etruscan craftsmen. The second began with the birth of Greek science. There are many valid reasons why dentistry has developed more fully along the technical rather than the scientific lines. The most common dental disorders— caries and periodontal disease— are older than civiliza- tion itself. They have been essentially universal afflictions to which nature offered little resistance. Although these diseases were not fatal they were a cause of great human unhappiness because they hampered the diverse functions of the complex physiological system we call the mouth. An art had to develop to cope with these dis- eases because neither nature nor science was able to. This dental art, developing slowly during the past 2000 years, reached a level of full effective- ness only in our own century. It is to America that the world owes most of the achievements of modern dentistry: the effec- tive restoration of carious teeth and replacement of those lost, the successful treatment of diseased teeth and the structures which support them and perhaps the most dramatic of all— the gift of anes- thesia. American dentistry, of all the branches of med- icine, has led the world from the beginning. For this the reasons are many and complex. Man ' s Right to Knowledge and the Free Use Thereof has been primarily responsible for the fact that, in dentistry, the words excellence and American have become practically synony- mous throughout the world. We owe this distinction also to the diversity of the sources from which dentistry drew its nour- ishment: Colonial craftsmen with their mechani- cal ingenuity, enterprising practitioners who brought to our shores the fruits of French dental art and English biological science, American physicians and engineers with their special tal- ents. All were drawn to dentistry in this country by its many challenges and opportunities. These diverse groups found in the new world an at- mosphere of freedom. They could work unfet- tered by guild or other restrictions which had hindered dental progress in the old world. American dentistry was bom and progressed in an atmosphere which held sacred the right to knowledge and its free use. An important use of this freedom occurred in 1840, when it became evident that the knowl- edge necessary for further growth in dentistry