University of Maryland Baltimore Dental School - Mirror Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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FHstory of the Class of 1902. T has been said that ' History is past Politics and Politics present History. Such being the case, the uninitiated may think us without a history; but such is not the case, since the Class of Nineteen Hundred and Two has struggled through several campaigns of a political nature, and has witnessed contests as exciting and absorbing as any outside our grand old institution. Laying aside this political feature of our past, we still have a record which will ever be recalled with mingled pleasure, pride and amazement. Did we say pleasure? Yes; for what a pleasure it will be in after years, when shadows of intervening events have interposed themselves to render dim the memory of our careers as students at the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, to recall the familiar scenes and friendly faces almost forgotten but for their association; to live again, in memory, a life wherein a delayed check, a leaky dam or a porous plate was its greatest worry, and the making of specimens and the passing of examinations its greatest anxiety. And with pride may we recall the way in which we have worked shoulder to shoulder, in perfect harmony and good fellowship, and have striven with friendly rivalry to attain the prizes lying at our common goal. With amazement, mingled with amusement, may we recall our entrance into the institution, to which we now point with pride as our Alma Mater. Was ever a Freshman Class possessed of more effrontery and self-confidence ushered into the extracting room? Recall, if you will, the familiar scene of a Freshman preparing to extract his first tooth. Seated in the chair his trembling yet unsuspecting victim, standing to the left of the chair a supercilious Senior, with his hands thrust into his coat pockets and his lips wreathed with smiles; near by the embryonic dentist, who is about to prove to the world that he is past-master of all the arts and sciences connected with his future profession. Surrounding this grotesque assemblage, you will observe seven grinning, gaping Freshmen who will be full-fledged surgeons when once each has had his turn at the forceps. And now for the ordeal whose outcome is another dentist, and, if appearances count for aught, probably a corpse also. He advances with the glittering steel in hand, and, with a look of fiery determination, thrusts, grapples, twists, shakes, pushes, pulls, and when he is almost exhausted — the patient quite so — (the seven comrades-in-arms in a state of nervous collapse and ready to abandon this branch of service forever) he flourishes on high the trophy of his

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Class of 1902. MottO — VlNCIT, QUI SE VlNCIT. Colors — DARK BLUE AND WHITE. Yell. Exostosis, Cementosis, Razzle, Dazzle, Rip, Rap, Roo! B.C.D.S., B.C.D.S., We ' re the Class of 1902! Officers. David Morrison Biggs, President. Emory Charles Thompson, Vice-President. Hoy Bruce McCuskey, Artist. William Augustus Hayes, Secretary. Frederi ck Charles House, Sergeant-al-Arms. Everett Earle Robins, Treasurer. James Le George Piper, Prophet. Albert Lea Alexander, Historian. William Lynn Hazlett, Valedictorian. Gxccutivc Committee. Henry Baker Johnston, Lewis Warren Crosby, George Guy Shoemaker, Leo Bernard Tearney, Harry Lloyd Gall.

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victory. In this engagement he has won his spurs, and now regards himself as worthy of the title, Knight of the Forceps. Then follow him, if you will, as he proceeds to take his first peep into the infirmary, the impression room, plaster room, the museum, the various laboratories and clinic rooms, and imagine his mental state when he sees what is being done around him, and realizes for the first time that he also must work his way through this vast mystic maze. Then his first impressions of the dissecting room obtrude themselves upon his memory. With what appreciation he now recalls a quotation familiar to students and analogous to: Faint heart ne ' er won fair lady. Imagine his troubled spirit at the end of a few weeks when he has heard a number of lectures advancing Old and New Theories of Caries, Chemical and Bacteriological theories, Exploded and Explosive theories, Out-of-date and Up-to-date theories, and, to him, innumerable combinations of theories; has listened to learned discourses on Characteristics of Herbivorous Teeth, reptilian teeth, teeth of birds, fishes, and, in fact, of every zoological specimen which has teeth, or whose supposed ancestors possessed anything that through continuous processes of evolution might develop those organs with such varied functions and forms; has been shown skulls, heads, jaws and similar objects, until his own diminutive head seems ready to burst; has seen demonstrated wireless telegraphy, and has been made acquainted with the wonders accomplished by liquid air and tepid water; ' ' has been shown how he, himself, is put together, and told of the specific functions of various cells which should be in his head; has been instructed in idiosyncrasy, predisposition, immunity and temperament, the dose and physiological actions of a hundred drugs! No wonder, then, that when he draws the drapery of his couch about him, expecting to spend his midnight hours in the arms of Morpheus, he sees before him a whirling panorama, presenting beakers, test-tubes, retorts, artificial teeth, teeth carved from soap, plaster models of malformed mouths, forceps, dental engines, electric batteries, gaping apes ' , fishes ' and alligators ' heads, headless trunks, trunkless heads and screaming- patients, and when he finally falls asleep lives again in his dreams the scenes of the extracting room. By some strange metamorphosis, however, he is himself the patient, the forceps are red hot, the operator merciless, the tooth a foot long and with ten roots, which bring away with them half his head. He awakes from this grewsome vision only to fall asleep again and find himself in the examination room, trying to decide which theory of caries will be acceptable, which table of calcification and eruption is the most accurate, whether to administer morphia or apomorphia to insure a quiescent state with his patient, and to show by equation how C0 2 is evolved by acting upon Zn with C 2 H 5 OH. At last his fitful slumbers may glide,