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

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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advancing Old and New Theories of Caries, Chemical and Bacteriological theories, Exploded and Explosive theories, Out-of-date and Up-to-date theories, and, to him, innumerable combinations of theories; has listened to learned discourses on Characteristics of Herbivorous Teeth,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,

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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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perchance, into a more restful sleep, from which, however, he is rudely awakened by the sound of the break- fast bell. The careworn face and troubled expression excite, however, but little sympathy in his associates, who ascribe his haggard appearance not to the true cause, but to the ravages of the God of Love. Happily such experiences do not last always, but give place to prospects of a brighter nature when he finds that there are other Freshmen, and that not everyone who has a self-satisfied air and who swaggers about with an all- important bearing, is a Senior, and, consequently, the supposed enemy to every Freshman. Nor does the Freshman year last always, but with the pleasant days of spring come his emancipation and promotion. As a Junior he feels that there are no more worlds to conquer, and that he can sit with an all-knowing smile and muse upon the newcomers drinking in knowledge in indigestible quantities, and gazing open- mouthed at the very scenes and things which one brief year before came so near unbalancing his own feeble mind. Proudly he shows the neophytes the simplicity of investing a partial or making a shell crown, and by his bearing almost convinces the Faculty that they are making a grave mistake in not presenting him with a diploma at once. He seeks to impress each Senior with the fact that the latter must have been in Sleepy Hollow for a year or more, so far is the Senior behind this Sophomorical young Junior. But age brings experience, and with this experience there comes to this once-inflated Junior a humili- ating sense of his own ignorance; so, after passing through the remainder of his Junior course and, probably, trying his wings for a few months between courses, he returns to enter upon the duties of a Senior classman, a sadder and a wiser man. He now realizes the necessity for closer application and more earnest endeavor, in order to prepare himself in the brief time yet remaining for the duties he hopes so soon to assume. No cause for wonder then is the troubled expression and remorseful look upon the face of the average thoughtful Senior; no wonder that even a stranger may discern with wonderful accuracy to which class each student belongs; no wonder that each Senior feels that the lengthening of the Dental Course to four terms is probably a wise step (at the same time inwardly congratulating himself that he is exempt from the fourth course, since three have almost turned him gray); no wonder then at the three distinct types of faces seen in and around our College domain. With these thoughts and realizations uppermost in his mind, the Senior finds himself jostled around among his colleagues of the years before — colleagues with whom he is just now becoming thoroughly ac- quainted, and to whom each day he is growing more strongly attached. In their congenial society serious thoughts soon give way to those of a lighter nature, and the old allurements to pleasure and merriment hurriedly present themselves. Remembrances of social pleasures and theatrical attractions of the years 26