Dentists

At the end of their annual convention in Atlantic City last week, U. S. dentists were as ignorant as ever of the cause of decayed teeth. Three explanations went the rounds: dirty mouths, improper food, unbalanced endocrine glands. None or all give the complete answer, according to the most conscientious research minds of the American Dental Association, 10,000 of whose 40,000 members attended the convention.

Humble for this ignorance, dentists pointed with pride to a new method of spotting the first speck of decay. Offered by Dr. James M. Prime of Omaha, this procedure is to paint the teeth with ammoniacal silver nitrate which gives "instant warning" by darkening rotting enamel.

Another notable office utility first reported last week was an obtundent (desensitizing) paste developed by Manhattan's Drs. Harold Aaron Osserman and Abraham Taub. Like Manhattan's Dr. Leroy L. Hartman's painkiller which attracted attention last year (TIME, Feb. 3, 1936), the new obtundent is supposed to deaden the fibrils of nerves which are supposed to run through the dentine of teeth. Critics of the Hartman and Osser-man-Taub anesthetics pointed out that, 1) it is doubtful that dentine contains nerve tissues, 2) the chemicals do not always work, 3) such news makes patients expect too much of a dentist. Commented Dr. Fred R. Adams of Manhattan: "Our problem is not how to avoid causing pain, for we now know how to do that, but to educate the patients to forget the fear which has developed through several generations of pain expectation."

Matching these rare forward steps in dentistry was Dr. John J. Fitz-Gibbon's method of covering cleft palates with gold plates. Dr. Fitz-Gibbon, who practices in

Holyoke, Mass., has a cleft palate himself, got into dentistry through his efforts to mend it. Covering the gap in the back of the mouth where the soft palate should be was his problem. Normally during speech the soft palate moves and forms a partition between the mouth and the cavity back of the nose (nasopharynx). Without it sounds reverberate through the nose. Artificial palates made of hardened rubber for the hard palate and soft rubber for the soft palate do not work well. Hinged artificial palates cause trouble.

Dr. Fitz-Gibbon solves the problem by taking a soft wax cast of the defective mouth. He makes a thin gold plate for the hard palate and a flattened, hollow gold bulb for the soft palate. He solders these together and anchors them to the upper teeth with lugs. When uttering words, the person who wears this device imperceptibly clenches his throat muscles. For practice he utters the word "giggle." This shuts off the upper pharynx. In inhaling, the throat is relaxed as in normal individuals.

People with cleft palates clench their nostrils and arch their tongues in effort to make their enunciation intelligible. Dr. Fitz-Gibbon breaks them of those habits by putting thimbles in their nostrils, guide wires in their mouths. Girls with cleft palates are harder to treat than boys, said he, "because girls are ordinarily protected from the rude mockery of other children. Consequently they are apt to take pride in their funny way of talking."

Professional Problems presented:

>> Surgeon General Thomas Parran locked himself in an Atlantic City hotel room to perfect a speech which would quiet the fears of Federalized medicine aroused by Senator J. Hamilton Lewis' speech to the doctors' convention last month (TIME, June 21). He emerged to tell the dentists' convention that in his opinion the "inherent right of every citizen to be able to secure for himself the services which science has made it possible for our professions to give" could be furnished without a "Federalized system of dental and medical practice." This meant that he would try to have the State governments shoulder the inevitable burden.

>> A more immediate problem for dentists than Federalization last week was raising the scholarly status of their profession. They have 38 good schools, which require at least two years of predental and four years of professional study. They have a new American Dental Foundation, incorporated to receive and administer bequests and contributions for dental research. Last week the national association decided to ask the Carnegie Foundation for some cash for more research.

>> Impelled by professional esprit de corps the A. D. A. last week agreed to give members who are stricken by disasters, such as this year's Ohio River flood, $100 outright and a reasonable loan.

>> Impelled by high professional ethics the association's lobbyists left the convention determined to have laws passed against dental advertising in the five States which lack such laws.* The typical law forbids a dentist having a sign with letters more than seven inches high, forbids his using more than a two-inch, one-column advertisement in a newspaper or magazine, forbids his making more than the bare gentlemanly statement that he is a dentist practicing here or there at such & such hours.

>> General magazines last year got $4,515,800 for advertisements of dental supplies and mouth washes which the A. D. A.'s Journal did not think honest enough for its special readers. The Journal therefore had a $40,000 deficit last year. Nonetheless the A. D. A. last week decided not to let down its high-minded advertising bars.

Nebraska experienced a peculiar flowering of such high dental ethics last month. The State's dental hygienists elected Ruth Beebe of Omaha as their best. Before she could get the money for a free trip to Atlantic City, the Omaha Bee-News reported her election and printed her picture. That publicity constituted advertising, decided Nebraska's dental hygienists and they refused to let the young woman represent them at last week's convention.

Presidents. A Kentuckian, Dr. Arthur Thomas McCormack of Louisville, is to become president of the American Public Health Association next October. Another Kentuckian, Dr. Irvin Abell of Louisville, is to become president of the American Medical Association next summer. No Kentucky dentist will join those future pillars of U. S. health as president of the American Dental Association for 1938. Only nominees to succeed ingoing President Caleb Willard Camalier of Washington (who last week succeeded outgoing President Leroy M. S. Miner of Boston) were Dr. Edward Henry Bruening, 55, of Omaha, long time professor of dental anatomy in Creighton University (Omaha) whose pastime is photography, and Dr. Marcus Llewellyn Ward, 62, longtime professor of dental metallurgy and onetime dental dean of the University of Michigan, whose pastime is skeet shooting. Skeet-shooter Ward won the election, promptly had his picture taken with his future predecessors (see cut).

Dr. Camalier (accent on last syllable), 50, the new A. D. A. president, has a busy practice among Washington office holders. Lobbying, his hobby, would be a useful one except for the fact that the A. D. A.'s most ambitious project, to have the children of the nation turned over to its members regularly for dental examination and treatment, is somewhat Utopian. If Congress and State Legislatures authorized such a national dental job, it would require 300,000 dentists. Dr. Camalier calculated last week. If there were that many men and women who were willing to invest the $10,000 to $12,000 necessary for education as dentists, the dental schools could not take care of them. Dr. Camalier has a more realistic prize in store for his constituents. He expects to have dentists put on the American Red Cross's rosters so that, on occasions of disaster, they may have just as good a chance as doctors to become heroes.

*New Mexico, Arizona, Florida, Nevada, Washington.

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