Hullihen, the oral surgeon

Abstract

The trend of the medical and dental professions toward an understanding of oral lesions, malformations, and diseases has progressed mainly because of vigorous research activities, supported by monies from appropriations, direct gifts, and endowment funds.

The dental school of today has a faculty composed of Doctors of Dental Surgery, Doctors of Medicine, and some members with both degrees; furthermore, the curriculum embraces several identical courses taught in the medical schools. Thus, the dental graduate of today not only understands the mechanics of dentistry, but he is also given a medical point of view, including the basic truths of modern scientific medicine. If you eliminate the craft of dental surgery and the mechanics of dentistry in a dental graduate's completed curriculum, you have remaining the science of medicine; to designate the latter dental medicine, must imply the practice of medicine through the dental profession. In the event he chooses to prepare himself for a specialty, he may take postgraduate study. However, if oral surgery is elected, then a hospital interneship will broaden his medical and surgical viewpoint. Professor Garretson of the University of Pennsylvania devoted his life establishing the field of oral surgery as a special branch, stating, “This specialty was that part of the medical and dental professions which overlapped.”

As early as 1839, the year when the first dental school was organized, Dr. S. P. Hullihen foresaw the necessity of an all-embracing medical, surgical and dental understanding: and by his professional career demonstrated that it was folly to attempt treatment of diseases of the mouth without appreciation of the complex mechanisms of the whole human organism.