Esthetics, Cosmetics, Prosthetics: Is This What Dentistry is About?

• Autores: David A. Chemin
• Localización: Journal of the history of dentistry: Official publication of the American Academy of the History of Dentistry, ISSN 1089-6287, Vol. 65, Nº. 3, 2017, págs. 112-117
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Good afternoon members of the Waring Library Society, faculty of the USCMC, students, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to express my appreciation to the organizers for inviting me to present, the Warren A. Sawyer Lecture. My talk today is drawn from my clinical experiences, observations, and the words, opinions, and writings of astute men and women, many who are now footnotes in our professional history.

    Today, I'd like you to consider with me, existentially, 'What Dentistry is About' through three perspectives:

    1) The nature of illness in general and oral afflictions specifically.

    2) The role and duties of dental practitioners.

    3) The interactions and relationships among the Waring Library, the Macaulay Museum and the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine.

    I'd like to begin with some basic tenets of the nature of illness. Our patients are human being, biological organism in equilibrium with their environment. How have these "patients" been perceived? Ancient medical writers in Greece wrote about the influences of climate, geography and related occurrences as factors in health and disease. They formulated the Humoral Theory to explain the body in health and disease. For it was assumed that a proper balance of the four humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile was essential. Additionally, the influences of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water; and the four qualities: hot, cold, dry, and moist were employed to explain imbalances of the human body, our emotions and our behaviors.

    This idea of health as harmony, the Greeks called Isonomia 2 and disease as a state of imbalance. This concept prevailed into the 17th century generating numerous treatment absurdities.