Alexandria Gazette

CIRCULAR LETTER TO DENTISTS

Richmond Virginia, Sept. 9.

Dear Doctor:-

There is today not a single recognized authority on medical teaching who will say that medicine and dentistry should be separated. To the contrary these subjects are now conceded to be so thoroughly inter related that they form a single profession, dentistry being a specialty of medicine.

You know, even if the public generally does not know, that the student of dentistry must learn just as the student of medicine learns at College, anatomy, histology, embryology, physiology, bacteriology, pathology, physical diagnosis, radiology, and the principles of surgery.

Dr. Alderman, when he says that in time a dental school may be established at Charlottesville, admits that the dental school is not a hope of the immediate future. Consequently, if quality of education which they need to fit them properly to attend the people of the State, it will be compelled either to combine the medical colleges in Richmond or to teach medicine at Charlottesville and dentistry in Richmond.

If the former alternative is accepted, dentistry as well as medicine will be benefited. If the latter is the will of the Legislature of Virginia, there will again be alternatives to consider.

The first of these alternatives is that medicine being taught at Charlottesville and dentistry at Richmond, the studies above mentioned will have to be taught at each place and there will be an uneconomical duplication of teaching costs.

The other alternative, and by far the more likely, is that the State's dental school will either lapse into insignificance and ultimately die or that dentistry will be taught in Richmond at a medical school entirely disassociated from the medical department of the University of Virginia, which would mean that this important branch or specialty of medicine would not be helped by the State, and would not have the dignity and importance to which it is justly entitled.

It is not a matter of pride merely that makes us, dentists, take such a serious interest in this controversy. We are convinced that for a time at least, and possibly permanently, dental education in Virginia will suffer if the State's medical school goes to Charlottesville; and this would be a distinct misfortune.

There are only nineteen class A dental schools in the United States and the Richmond school is one of them. Through association with a class A medical college it is now costing the State comparatively little money to maintain this distinction and it is of incalculable value to the people of Virginia that its dentists should have the quality of training that can be given only by a dental school of the highest class.

If an adequate dental school should be attempted as a separate institution disassociated from the medical college or operated in another city it would cost Virginia virtually half the present expenditures for medicine, dentistry and pharmacy.

It is our firm conviction that such education cannot be imparted at Charlottesville even in the remote future which Dr. Alderman seems to think possible, and we therefore ask you, as a loyal member of your profession, to place this side of the controversy before your friends and neighbors whose interests and the interests of their children are at stake.

Very truly yours,

M. B. RUDD.

P. S. There will be mailed to you this week two copies of a bulletin which contains important information. One copy is for you, the other we hope you will take to your legislative representative and discuss with him the responsibility which rests upon him in deciding for the well being of dentistry in Virginia.