Abstract
Oral health and dental care are scarcely mentioned in the reports on health care system in Pakistan and many countries abroad e.g. Canada. According to reports it was Goldsmith and Ivory Tuner Paul Revere who constructed the false teeth in Boston. In those days tooth decay and toothaches were considered to be an inevitable parts of life and looking after the teeth was considered as mechanical concern. Chapin Harris is reported to have lead the efforts to elevate this trade to a profession. Dental students learned the mechanism of drilling and filing teeth and constructing dentures and they also learned to perform dental extractions. At that time oral cavity was considered as the seat of most of the illnesses, hence removal of the teeth was most often recommended. Later it was realized that dentistry can no longer be accepted as mere tooth technology and it has to be developed as a specialty in line with developments of other medical disciplines as specialization was transforming many aspects of Western medicine. 1 As an act of defiance, the dentist and dental X-ray innovator C. Edmund Kells refused to operate upon physicians’ instructions and stood up for tooth preservation in 1920.1 Since then dentistry is operating in a different domain from the medical profession. Medical and Dental schools also remained separate. This autonomy of dentistry was applauded by the Journal of the American Dental Association.
Shaukat Ali Jawaid. (2020) Plight of Dentistry in Pakistan, Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, Volume -36, Issue 3.
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