Catalogue of Dental Materials, Furniture, Instruments, Etc (Classic Reprint)

With a view of enabling dentists to gratify the natural curiosity of patients as to the composition and manufacture of porcelain teeth, the following description, condensed from the editorial correspondence of the Chicago Dribuw, is deemed a suitable preface to this catalogue. No part of my sojourn in Philadelphia has been more interesting to me than the visits I have paid to some of the representative industrial features of the city. The leading manufacturing enterprises whose magnitude is the growth of years, and whose products carry the name of Philadelphia manufacturers to all parts of the country and the habitable globe, are a theme I purpose to speak of in this letter. I have passed the morning among teeth. If there be, par excellence, an American specialty, it is dentistry. Time was when the dentist was to a large extent his own manufacturer of the teeth with which he contrived to supply natures losses. It is curious now to look back at the early stages of the art, and see by what steps it found its way towards perfection. First, human teeth, parted with and sold as articles of merchandise; then a recourse to kindred animal substances, bone or ivory, the tusk of the behemoth being largely esteemed. But these had all the perishable character of organic substances, the ban of decay had been passed upon them, and so they fell into disfavor. Then the day of porcelain teeth began. A mong the American dentists laboriously working at the problem of reproducing natures effects in the machinery of mastication, it could but happen that the portal of happy invention must yield to some fortunate knock, and here in Philadelphia the response was first given. It is not my purpose to decide the claim of priority. It is hardly necessary to do more than show what results have grown from a happy beginning. It is not invidious to declare how very largely these come from
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)