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

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THE MIRROR tistry, or prosthetic dentistry, as our American friends prefer to call it, that was practiced in ancient Rome appears to have been rather primitive, as the following from the poet Martial shows : ' Thou has only three teeth, and these Are of boxwood, varnished over. Thou shouldst fear to laugh ; Weep always, if thou art wise. ' The Etrurians, who inhabited the northern part of Italy, were well skilled in mechanical sciences, and Etruria flourished as the Italian seat of learning, wealth and power. Among the Etrurians dental science was studied and practiced as a specialty of medicine. However, in this department of learning, says Prof. G. A. F. Van Rhyn, the eminent archaeologist, the Etrurians were imita- tive rather than creative, and the art bore at every period the marks of foreign influence, especially Egyptian, Babylonian and Grecian. At the International Congress held in Rome in 1900 Professor Guerini exhibited several specimens of dental art which proved that something very much like bridgework was practiced in ancient Italy so efficiently that it has lasted thirty centuries. Artificial crowns have also been found in Etruscan tombs. Dr. Deneffe states that in the museum of the University of Ghent there is a set of artificial teeth found in a tomb at Orvieto, with jewels and Etruscan vases; he gives their date as from 5000 to 6000 years before Christ. The science of dentistry from the fifth to the eighteenth cen- turies was entirely neglected, and to the suffering masses lost in oblivion during the long and blank period of human record his- torically known as the Middle Ages. In this time the mere opera- tion of extracting useless and painful teeth was the extent of dental science. Thus this dark age not only retarded advance- ment in our science, but it produced retrogression, with but few occasional rays of light penetrating its misty veil, only to be im- mediately swallowed in the dense surrounding gloom of supersti- tion and religious intolerance. Dentistry fell like all other call-

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THE MIRROR without any injury or violence; neither will I be prevailed upon by another to administer pernicious physics. The Grecian custom of cremating the dead has caused the scarcity of dental specimens. What proof we have of their knowl- edge of dental prosthesis is found in the literature of these people. We will now bid the scholarly Grecians good-by and travel to the land of war — Italy — there to greet the model Roman. Al- though the Romans were constantly engaged in battle, yet some attention was paid to the finer arts. Like their immediate neigh- bors, the Grecians, after whom they copied, they made priests of the temples custodians of divine cure. The following, taken from an ancient work on mythological beliefs, gives a complete list of such saints and gods as the plebeians were obliged to give devotion in case of ordinary dental troubles : Saint Appollonia guarded against toothache; Saint Lucy guarded against sore tooth; Saint Anthony guarded against inflammation; Saint Ger- manus guarded against diseased eruption ; Saint Marcus guarded against neuralgia ; Saint Herbert guarded against poisoned teeth. The Roman priests also erected temples in memory of the great Grecian physician, sculapius, and worshiped him as a god of medicine. Among the voluminous writings of the Latin poets frequent reference is made to artificial teeth. The famous Mar- tial, who lived in the first century B. C., says that a Roman den- tist, Cascellius, is in the habit of fastening, as well as extracting, the teeth. To Lelius the same author says: You are not ashamed to purchase teeth and hair, and adds that the toothless mouth of gle was repaired with bone and ivory ; also that Galla, more refined, removed her artificial teeth during the night. An eminent EngHsh scholar adds : Cicero, when speak- ing of a law passed to check the unnecessary expense of funerals, says : ' Neve aurum addito, ' etc. ; that is. Add no gold to the funeral ofiferings, but whosoever has his teeth bound with gold ' suevi auro- dentes vincti, ' let it be no evasion of the law to bury or burn him without it. The same authority continues, saying: Any mechanical den- 19

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THE MIRROR ings, and what little had been known was doomed and lost. In those dark ages the barber ' s craft was dignified with the title of a profession, being joined with the art of surgery. Early in the seventeenth century a jesting poet spoke of the barber-surgeon as : His pole with pewter basins hung, With rotten teeth in order strung, And cups that in the window stood Lin ' d with red rags, to look like blood, Who shaved, drew teeth and bled a vein. The memorial between the dental profession and the tonsorial art is still seen in the striped pole and basin sometimes seen pro- jecting as a symbol in front of the barber shops. It was not until late in 1700 that the science of dental prosthesis was eliminated from the jewelry and barber shops and put in the hands of men who not only understood the fundamental principle underlying the science, but also thoroughly studied the human mouth and its many adjacent connections. The anatomical research of Vesalius, later on others, and prominent among them Fallopius Eustachius, Pare, Hunter and Fox, did much toward recreating the medical art, which for upwards of ten centuries lay dormant and unob- served. Under the very shadow of the famous European univer- sities dentistry was professed by the blacksmith, barber, bather, jeweler, silversmith, monk, and even the cobbler. But matters were not destined to so remain, for the hospitable goddess of lib- erty and enlightenment, whose natal day the world shall ever cherish, unloosened fetters and turned the page of progress. Edu- cational matters began to receive attention and the invention of printing and the discovery of America led the way to future tri- umphs. It was in the latter part of the last century, or about the period of the War for Independence, that dentistry was introduced in America. The first men known to have practiced the profession in this country were an Englishman (John Woofendale) and a Frenchman (Joseph Lemaire). John Woofendale arrived in the 21