THE TEETH AS AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN PATHOGENESIS

My object is to call the attention of physicians and dentists alike to the importance of further study and preparation for work in a field which has no hard and fast boundaries but which is widely overlapped by both medicine and dentistry. Because of the diverse relations of medicine to dentistry and dentistry to medicine it is important that the dentist be versed in general medicine; also that the physician be conversant with more of the general conditions which make up the specialty called dentistry, which has been known as a profession apart from and unconnected with medicine. It is necessary that the practitioner, whether he be dentist or physician, should understand the etiology and pathology as it pertains to the case in hand, a living pathology, as it were. Only this condition permits of the practice of logical therapeutics.

The teeth, during the entire life of the individual, play