We all know the script. Do an undergraduate degree in Medicine and Surgery first, then specialize later. With one glaring exception- Dentistry. Medical school and dental school are separate, though the tooth is part of the human body. Ideally, a dentist should study medicine first then specialize in dentistry. So, why isn't this the case?
Dentistry has a long history, but we’ll start in the Middle Ages when barber-surgeons performed surgical and dental procedures. Barber-surgeons could trim your beard, fix your teeth and if you were unlucky enough, amputate your gangrenous hand or give you enemas. Instead of the upbeat music you listen to when getting a haircut nowadays, people in those times were treated to the screams of men in pain.
College-educated physicians in those days saw surgery as a low-level skill and did not perform surgical or dental procedures. They treated other ailments but referred patients to barber-surgeons for ‘dirty’ procedures. So, in many aspects, even surgery was not part of medicine at some point. Surgery would only be incorporated into the medical profession as late as the 17th Century. Dentistry was not so lucky.
The profession of dentistry continued as an apprenticeship with no formal training. Fast forward to 19th century USA, when two dentists Horace Hayden and Chapin Harris felt that dentistry deserved a higher status. They started advocating for its addition to university medical education.
They approached the College of Medicine at the University of Maryland but the physicians at the college rejected the proposal, terming dentistry as a ‘subject of little consequence’. This rejection, known as the ‘historical rebuff’, is when medicine formally rejected dentistry.
After a few more rejections, Hayden and Harris decided to open an independent college of dental surgery with donations from colleagues and acquaintances. In 1840, the first dental college in the world was opened in Baltimore, thanks to these efforts. Many would follow suit around the world.
And so, dentistry became a profession in its own right, independent of medicine and surgery.
