25 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.

The physical method of treating disease presents a tremendous and
significant departure from the empiricism of medicine and the
experimentation of dietetics, the restricted fields of
electricity, suggestion, water cures, and massage. The patient as
an individual is n