That American dentists are most highly regarded abroad is more than a matter of every-day knowledge. It has got to be so now that a foreigner will purchase instruments of American make, and then advertise himself as an American dentist for the purpose of getting business,--a purpose in which, as a rule, he is quite successful. But let me stop here to do honor to another American dentist who is more highly honored abroad than one ever can be at home, and of whom it might be said, perhaps, that{340} he has had more friends among the royalty and nobility of Europe than any other man of his time. This is Dr. Evans, who has lived for years in Paris, who was the personal friend of Napoleon III and the trusted guide and companion of the Empress Eugenie when she fled from Paris. While it may be said of him that the qualities that made him so universally popular were personal qualities, rather than professional knowledge, it must be said in reply that it was his eminent professional attainment which first brought him such influential friends. But time presses, and I want, before closing, to say a little about dentistry in America. It was about 1835 that Dr. Harris, then residing in Baltimore, though born near Syracuse, conceived the modern idea of the scope and practice of dentistry. He was ambitious to put the dentists of his time upon a higher professional level, and to make of dentistry a specialty in medicine. He applied to various medical schools to found dental chairs, and to teach oral pathology along with dental mechanics, as one of the branches of medicine, the graduating degree to be M.D., as with other medical specialties. But the men of his time were so short-sighted and of such constricted mental calibre, and the dentists were so uneducated, that the Baltimore schools declined. He therefore established a separate school, being forced to take this step. This school was the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, established in 1839,--the first in any country. The dentistry of that day was crude, and its teaching was comparatively inefficient. It was not until six years later that the next, the Cincinnati College of Dental Surgery was organized,--in 1845. Then, in time, followed Philadelphia. But all these colleges were separate institutions, teaching only those branches which it was held necessary that a _dentist_ should know and having very little of medicine in their curriculum. They conferred the degree of D.D.S. In 1868 Harvard University did what she ought to have{341} done at the outset. She opened a dental department and began the teaching of dentistry as a branch of medicine, establishing therefor a separate degree,--D.M.D.,--_Den-tarioe Meclicince_ Doctor. In 1874 the University of Michigan established a dental department, and a little later the University of Pennsylvania did the same. These university schools gave an immensely widened scope to the study, which was made broader with each succeeding year.