Dental and Medical Relationships at Yale *

That dentistry and medicine are related has been so frequently commented upon during that past decade, and is today so generally accepted, that it does not need repetition here. Although a great deal has been said on the subject, there is still a need to show how and where the two professions are connected. It is true that the tooth is a part of the human body; that dentistry has been and still is practised by physicians in some countries; and that among ancient people dental and other physical disorders were treated by the same individual. But these facts do not prove that dentistry and medicine are closely bound together today, nor do they warrant an assumption that the dentist and the physician have identical functions and should be given the same training. However, there are many problems which clearly call for the application of both medical and dental knowledge. For example, a cause and effect association between acute nephritis and an acute dental abscess has been demonstrated in some cases by clinical experience. In such cases the biological knowledge of disease which the good physician has at his command is needed, as well as is the skill of the dentist who can readily find and remove the abscess. Here we observe the fields of dentistry and medicine in a very intimate association. The knowledge which has already been gained and which might be brought to bear upon the problem is divided between two individuals who do not often speak a common language. In order to facilitate the solution of such problems it would seem advisable to combine, in a few individuals at least, the physician's general medical knowledge, the dentist's skill in handling such a case, and the biological knowledge necessary for the understanding of the local dental disease. The fact that there is a sphere in which dentistry and medicine merge does not mean that all dentistry is closely linked to medicine. In our emphasis upon investigation in that sphere in which the two fields do admittedly overlap, we have no quarrel with dentistry as a whole. One can have only the highest regard for the remarkable