The reason why dentists before the time of Fauchard published hardly anything concerning their art, was perhaps out of a sentiment of jealousy, which rendered them (that is, the best of the profession and therefore the ones most capable of writing) but little disposed to make known to others the results of their studies and of their experience, lest the fruits of their long labors should be utilized by others and they themselves be materially damaged by competition. That this sentiment of jealous egotism really existed in many dentists may be, in a certain manner, deduced from a few words of Fauchard himself, who, although he has the very great merit of breaking with mean, old-world prejudices, nevertheless expresses the prevalent idea of the time, consisting in the belief that every artificer, every inventor, had not only the right, but also the duty of surrounding his discoveries with secrecy and mystery. These are the words in which, making known a certain improvement in dental prosthesis invented by him, he at the same time expressed his conviction that by so doing he is acting against his own interests: “I have perfected and also invented several artificial pieces both for substituting a part of the teeth and for remedying their entire loss, and these pieces substitute them so well that they serve perfectly for the same uses as the natural teeth. To the prejudice of my own interests I now give the most exact description possible of them.” Now, although a man of elevated mind, such as Fauchard, may have been capable of sacrificing his material interests to higher aims, it is not, however, to be wondered at, taking also into consideration the lesser degree of culture and of professional ability of his predecessors, that none among them should have been found sufficiently disinterested to publish the results of their particular studies and experience, besides all those technical details which according to the ideas of that time constituted the secrets of the profession. In the course of this history, we have seen that the dental art was practised from the most remote times and in the most various countries, remaining, notwithstanding, for centuries in an embryonal condition. It was toward the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century that, in the midst of the highly advanced civilization of the great French capital, it attained a high degree of development, entitling it to be considered a special branch of the medical art.