By taking the latter view of it the work is ennobled and their interest for it cultivated. By taking the trade view of it they have lost those finer features which{337} lift mechanical work out of the mere level of a trade. Moreover, men in time past have been guilty of altogether too much trades-union tactics, which are vehemently opposed to professional ethics, and this has been another feature to degrade rather than elevate dentistry. This has been indeed a great misfortune, for men have been misled by the need for cultivation of their hands, or their manual powers, and have been persuaded away from a finer study of fundamental principles upon which the whole practice of dentistry should be based. And so it has happened that men have been so ambitious to become perfect operators that they have neglected anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and pathology, have even neglected odontology, sacrificing everything else to their work as mere artificers. If one scrutinizes the subject properly, there is no reason why there should not grow up a class of men fitted to attend to any lesion of the mouth or of the parts adjoining. In other words, there is no reason why there is not more excuse for true oral surgeons than there is for any other class of specialists, save possibly those who treat the eye. Aural surgery, nasal surgery, pelvic surgery, rectal surgery, etc., are simply voluntary limitations and applications of general surgery to special parts; but he who attends to the teeth has to do so much work of a character which the surgeon is not called upon to perform in any other area, that I have always claimed the oral surgeon deserved a place, as he had a field, by himself. Nevertheless, the knowledge which shall fit a man for such work is not to be obtained in the ordinary dental course, nor in three years of study, even under the best of auspices. The man who would be an ideal oral surgeon must be not only generally familiar with anatomy and physiology, but must thoroughly know the embryology of the face and teeth, the physiology not alone of the organs of the mouth, but of all the secreting glands and the chemistry of all their secretions;{338} not only the anatomy of the cranium, but general anatomy as well, and even comparative anatomy. He must be well informed in the explanations of all the congenital defects met about the face and mouth; he must be familiar not only with the ordinary principles of pathology and bacteriology, but he will find in the fluids about the mouth such a fertile opportunity for bacteriological study that, be he ever so expert or erudite, he has still much left to investigate in this direction. There is no disease-germ with which he can afford to be unfamiliar, and, as any form of tumor may be found in or about the mouth, he should be familiar with the entire subject of tumors and their surgical treatment.