Malvin E Ring

..V. Black. These initial subscribers may be considered the core group of truly professional American dentists. They became the leaders of the newly born profession of dentistry. Short biographies of some of them are included...

..His memory should be resurrected, and the profession must be made aware of the great debt it owes to this intrepid fighter for a better dental profession...

..Selections from it give us a rare personal insight into the type of person this significant dental historical figure was, as well as the struggles he endured in his hard life...

..This author was fortunate to be able to study all this material, and the poems published herein give a much fuller and rounded picture of this monumental figure in American, and world, dentistry...

..Nevertheless, many in the dental profession are unaware of their colleagues who have achieved fame in other fields. Only a very few of these outstanding dentists are discussed in this article...

..When he was older, this led to his speech being so badly affected, that he could barely be understood...

..He soon earned a reputation as the leading oral surgeon of the southern states, and in 1850, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery awarded him an honorary D.D.S...

..His postulating a "chemico-parasitic" origin of caries laid the basis for all the modern research in dentistry aimed at wiping this scourge out. Contemporary research has proven the worth of Miller's groundbreaking theory...

..However, what makes him noteworthy is the fact that he was the very first person to patent a dentifrice and the first to use marketing techniques similar to those used by the foremost toothpaste manufacturers of today...

..It took a renowned dental historian, Dr. Curt Proskauer, using logical deduction, to disprove that conclusion. The result was to push back our knowledge of certain medical procedures by a thousand years!..

..Sadly, he didn't live to see his dream fulfilled. It would take 20 more years--and a hard fight to overcome opposition within the profession--until a university-affiliated school was established in Buffalo...

..In one of Tomeo's works, he included a picture of forceps holding an extracted tooth. This was the first time a forceps was pictured in a printed book...

..The article ends with the recounting of a near-fatal case that was in no way the dentist's fault and could not have been prevented...

..And this was almost a half-century before definitive research showed the value of fluorine as a preventive of caries...

..The many undesirable properties of cocaine led scientists to find a safer alternative. Since then, more effective local anesthetics have been and continue to be developed...