Instructive clinical case reports

• Published in: Oral surgery, oral medicine, oral pathology Vol. 10; no. 12; pp. 1239 - 1253
• Main Author: Blum, Theodor
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.12.1957
• Subjects: Cysts; Dentigerous Cyst; Jaw Neoplasms; Medical Records; Mouth Neoplasms; OldMedline; JAWS/neoplasms; MOUTH/neoplasms; CYSTS, DENTIGEROUS/case reports
• ISSN: 0030-4220; 1878-2175
• DOI: 10.1016/S0030-4220(57)80022-X

In my introduction to this presentation I expressed the hope that the cases described will be of interest to you and assist you in the care of your patients. Even if you are aware of some or all of the points which I emphasized, they may still give you an idea of what others overlook. You, in turn, through conversation and lectures, can help other practitioners to avoid such errors and, by adding to their knowledge, benefit their patients. It may seem to you that I have turned preacher. I will risk this accusation, because the thought that I wish to express is important. There were times when knowledge and experience were kept secret by the practitioners of the healing arts. For instance, for more than three generations (starting in the early part of the seventeenth century) the Chamberlen family in England kept to themselves the invention of an obstetrical forceps to be used in difficult labors. I do not think that this happens today. However, general practitioners and specialists in both the medical and dental professions do not cooperate sufficiently, and jealousy is often evident. The result is that the patients suffers. All my professional life I have endeavored to improve professional relations between the members of these professions, and I feel certain that meeting one's colleagues socially and at lectures and clinics helps a lot. Let us return now to our subject. We have dealt with disease and its treatment. However, this is not enough. Our aim today is prevention of disease and the maintenance of health. To accomplish it we recommend periodic health examination, which in our field means prophylaxis, routine x-ray examination, and pulp testing at regular intervals. In closing, I wish to quote from an interview entitled: “Prescription for Medicine: Dr. Gregg, Lasker Award Winner, Outlines a Medical Philosophy” by Leonard Engel, which appeared in the New York Times Magazine Section (Nov. 4, 1956). In this article Dr. Alan Gregg, who was for twenty-six years first the director of the medical sciences division of the Rockefeller Foundation and then vice-president of the Foundation, said: “Recently, our way of referring to health and illness has begun to change. We hear less of ‘disease’ and more of health maintenance, health protection and the health professions. This change signifies a larger horizon, a larger task, but it also aims at a more positive and desirable goal for medicine than the mere absence of disease. The positive goal of maintaining health will be more nearly realized when the public has been educated to ask for it.” Let us subscribe to this program, by coordinating more closely the efforts of the dental and medical professions.