In 1766 America's first dentist came to the United States. By 1785 itinerant dentists had built up a lucrative practice. In 1825 a course of lectures on dentistry was delivered before the medical class at the University of Maryland. As early as 1742 treatises were written "Upon Dentition and the Breeding of Teeth in Children." In 1803 the possibility of correcting irregularities was pointed out, as was the pernicious effect of tartar on the teeth in 1827. In 1838 attempts were made to abolish, "in all common cases, the pernicious habit of tooth drawing." In 1841 treatises were written on the importance of regulating the teeth of children before the fourteenth year and on the importance of preserving the first teeth. Yet in 1908 it is necessary to write the chapter on Dental Sanitation. Few physicians, whether in private practice or hospitals or just out of medical college, consider it necessary to know the conditions of the mouth before prescribing drugs for physical illness.
Osteopathy furnishes an up-to-date illustration. Discredited by the medical profession, by medical journals and medical schools, it has in fifteen years built up a practice of eight thousand men, having from one to three years' training, including over one hundred physicians with full medical training plus a course in osteopathy. There were means of learning fifteen years ago what was truth and what was quackery about the practice of osteopathy. By refusing to look for its truth and by concentrating attention upon its quackery the medical profession has lost fifteen years. Whereas the truth of osteopathy should have been adopted by the medical colleges and a knowledge of its possibilities and limitations required of every practicing physician, a position has been reached where alleged quackery seems in several important points to be discrediting the sincerity, the intelligence, and the efficiency of orthodox medicine. No appeal to the natural can be stronger, no justification of schools of preventive medicine more complete, than the following paragraph from an osteopathic physician who is among the small number who, having both the medical and osteopathic degrees, see both the possibilities and limitations of manual surgery and demand the inclusion of this new science in the medical curriculum.