Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
I realize that advertising is "unethical" among dentists as among
physicians. Humbug and imposition are supposed to go inevitably with
self-advertising by the methods used in selling shoes or automobiles.
Therefore such advertising is prohibited. But what seems to be
forgotten in this definition of ethics is that the need and the
opportunity for dental care must be advertised in some way, if we are
ever to control diseases and evils due to bad teeth. The rich that one
dentist can help are able to pay for his good taste, his neat
attendants, his automobile, his club dues, his vacations at fashionable
resorts, his hours without work, his standard of living. All of these
things advertise him, just as hospital appointments and social position
may and do advertise successful physicians. The patients of moderate
means that one dentist can treat cannot afford to pay for rent, time
disengaged, and indirect advertising. Either they must have free
treatment, must go without treatment, or must go to a dental parlor
where dental needs are organized so that a very large number will
contribute to rent and display. It is out of the question to have both
dentists and patients so distributed and prices so adjusted that
dentists can make a good living by charging what the patient can
afford, and at the same time admit of every patient being properly
treated when necessary. Judging from every other branch of work, the
solution of the problem lies partly in free care for those who can pay
nothing or very little, and partly in cooeperative treatment through the
heretofore objectionable dental parlors. If instead of inveighing
against advertisers, honorable and capable dentists worked through
dental and medical societies to secure adequate public supervision of
dental practice, more progress would be made against dental
malpractice.
Dental clinics will quickly follow the publication of facts that
schools should gather. In some places these should be separate; but at
first the best thing is to make every hospital, every children's home,
every settlement a clinic, and every school an examining center. A
skilled dentist informs me: "The demand that will follow examination of
school children's teeth will make it profitable for young dentists to
adopt a cooeperative scheme, where several young men hire a parlor in a
cheap district, and, under the supervision of some experienced dentist,
give good advice at reasonable rates. This is the best antidote to the
dental parlor which exploits the public so shamelessly." Bellevue
Hospital in New York is the first general hospital to establish regular
dental examination; others will undoubtedly soon follow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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