Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
| Vol. II. | Brooklyn, N. Y., August, 1888. | No. 2. |
Mr. President and Gentlemen:—Some months ago, when sittingin the operating-chair of your Chairman of the Committee on Subjects,he asked me if I would not read a paper before the Brooklyn DentalSociety. In the helpless condition in which I then was, with literallya gag in my mouth, robbing me of the prerogative of free speech, andunder the shadow of a formidable mallet, I somewhat timorously signifiedan assent. Under those circumstances I know of few men whowould have had the moral and physical courage to have resisted suchan appeal. When in the course of his further practices, he asked mewhat my subject would be, I promptly replied by mentioning the thingthen most vivid in my mind: Facial Neuralgia.
I hardly realized my rashness and what I had undertaken, until Ireceived your printed bulletin of subjects. But it has seemed to meon further thought that we might perhaps spend an hour profitablytogether in comparing notes about that borderland of facts and problems,which you touch on the one side as dentists and I on the other98as physician. And I trust you will be lenient with me in your judgmentsif I go astray in my talk, and I pray you to remember that wedoctors labor under great disadvantages compared with you dentists,contrasting the width and vagueness of our territory of research withthe precision and accuracy of yours. I have again and again enviedthe exquisite dexterity and the certainty of adapting means to endswhich I have seen exhibited by members of your profession, and vainlylonged for the same in my own. But on the other hand, I think itmay justly be urged that the dentists have not contributed as much tothe general stock of knowledge, especially to the solution of disputedquestions of pathology, such as the relation of micro-organisms to disease,as their unrivaled opportunities for observation would allow.
I shall therefore not hesitate, Mr. President, to somewhat dogmaticallypresent my views on certain subjects, but I ask you to believeit is mainly because I hope the gentlemen present will honor them byfrank and full discussion.
I shall also ask permission to change the subject of my remarksfrom the announced title to one of a little wider scope, namely, Pain,with special reference to its dental relations.
I presume the symptom of pain is the one for which the overwhelmingnumber of your patients, as the majority of ours, apply to