Historical Sketch of the University of Maryland, School of Medicine (1807-1890)
The first significant text that relied on Winder’s words was Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell M.D.’s 1891 Historical Sketch of the University of Maryland, School of Medicine (1807-1890).
“The University [of Maryland] has a connection with the founding of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery of which few are now aware. This institution was chartered in 1839, and the founders first made application to the authorities of the University for admission as a separate department thereof. This being refused, they established an independent dental school, the first, it is claimed, in the world. It cannot but be regretted that their offer was not was not accepted, as with the facilities at hand a dental department could have been readily engrafted upon the medical and a higher standard of requirements enforced. Dentistry should be regarded as merely a specialty of medicine, standing upon the same footing as ophthalmology, dermatology, neurology, etc. As practiced hitherto, it has amounted to little more than a mechanical trade. At the time referred to, however, it must be remembered that the University [of Maryland] was in an unsettled condition or else just emerging from it. The almost phenomenal success of the recently established dental department shows what might have been done in this direction.”
This passage included the following footnote, however:
“The writer is unable to give his authority for the above statement, not having made a not of it or else having lost the reference…”
Cordell admits to having no actual evidence for this story, but he likely did have access to Winder’s article from 1884, which was also unsubstantiated. Cordell also did not want to commit to the fact that the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery was the first dental college established in the world, which would have been a readily available piece of information to confirm in 1884. He also input his own opinion that dentistry did not exist at the same standard of medicine or any of the medical specialties, indicating his own bias towards the field that may not have warranted his effort to conduct proper historical research around the history of the dental school.
Cordell’s last line, however, does provide insight into why Hayden and Harris likely would not have reached out to the University of Maryland to establish a dental department. They would have both been very familiar with the legal and financial battles faced by the University of Maryland during the 1820s and 1830s, as they were in numerous associations with the faculty members, and Hayden was providing lectures to the students both directly before and directly after the “unsettled condition” the school was in.
The Rise, Fall and Revival of Dental Prosthesis
Photograph of Bernard J. Cigrand taken from Vol 10 of the American Dental Journal, 1913
Shortly after Cordell’s history of the University of Maryland was made available, B. J. Cigrand, a dentist who most consider the “Father” of Flag Day, published The Rise, Fall and Revival of Dental Prosthesis, a lecture he gave in 1892 on the history of the dental profession. This text created the words that would be repeated by dentists and doctors of the 20th and 21st century to reinforce the “rejection” of dentistry by medicine.
“…it was the ambition of Dr. Harris to organize a dental school as adjunct to the medical department of the University of Maryland. The practice of dentistry at this time, however, being with few exceptions at a very low ebb, the faculty of the university, rejected the proposition of Dr. Harris, they giving as an excuse, that the subject of dentistry was of little consequence and thus justified their unfavorable action. The rejection seemed to give Dr. Harris new energy and stimulated in him a new desire, and as a result the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery was established.”
As seen throughout the exhibition, “The ambition of Dr. Harris” was likely never to organize a dental school as part of a medical department of any university, let alone the University of Maryland. Cigrand, however, followed in the footsteps of Cordell, Winder, and Taylor by not providing or referencing to any piece of evidence that this rejection ever occurred. Cigrand, also like Cordell, Winder, and Taylor, ignore Hayden’s contribution to elevating the profession during the early 1800s, and his impactful contribution to founding the dental school as well.
The Gies Report
Considered a seminal work in dental education, Dental Education in the United States and Canada; a report to the Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching by William J. Gies would significantly transform how dentists thought about their profession and how future dentists should be trained. This widely read report, still referenced today would cement the “rejection” of dentistry by medicine.
Click on the image above to read the full Chapter from The Gies Report detailing the “rejection.”
In Chapter 2, section b titled, Unsuccessful efforts to develop dental education under medical auspices, Gies pulls directly from Cigrand’s history to relay his take on the history of the foundation of the dental profession and dental education.
“Harris and Hayden and a number of associated physicians and dentists, influenced no doubt by the more favorable professional conditions in England, and stimulated probably by the important advances in the micro-anatomy of the teeth that had then recently been made abroad by improvements in histological technique, saw clearly that dentistry required special educational promotion. In 1839, aiming to develop such training under medical auspices, they suggested that dentistry be taught formally at the University of Maryland, which at the time consisted mainly of the school of medicine; but their proposal was rejected, the Medical Faculty expressing the opinion, that “the subject of dentistry was of little consequence and thus justified their unfavorable action.”
Gies, like his predecessors, once again did not provide any evidence for his take on the history of the foundation of the dental profession in Baltimore, but clearly relies heavily on Cigrand’s and Cordell’s histories for his report.
Actually looking at the words and actions of Baltimore’s medical community, the faculty at the University of Maryland, and the founders of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery shares a much more supportive foundation.
