Dental assistants are important members of the dental healthcare team. A career as a dental assistant is exciting, challenging, and very rewarding. Dental assisting is a career that offers many opportunities for young people and individuals who may be older and wish to return to school to begin a new career.

This chapter takes you through the highlights in the history of dentistry, including how the Lady in Attendance evolved into the highly skilled dental health professional recognized today as the dental assistant. You will learn the roles and responsibilities of each member of the dental health team and how the members interact to provide patients with quality dental care. You will also learn about the specialty areas of dentistry.

The History of Dentistry

Dentistry has a long and fascinating history. From the earliest times, humans have suffered from dental pain and have sought a variety of means to cure it. As they developed tools, humans also cleaned and cared for their teeth. Early toothbrushes ranged from wooden sticks with frayed ends to ivory-handled brushes with animal-hair bristles for cleaning the teeth. Today, many people think of “cosmetic dentistry” as a relatively new field, but skulls of ninth century Mayans have numerous inlays of decorative jade and turquoise on the front teeth. Skulls of the Incas discovered in Ecuador have gold pounded into prepared holes in the teeth, similar to modern gold inlay restorations. As B.W. Weinberger noted in Dentistry: An Illustrated History* a profession that is ignorant of its past experiences has lost a valuable asset because “it has missed its best guide to the future.” Table 1-1 lists major highlights in the history of dentistry.

TABLE 1-1

Highlights in the History of Dentistry

Date	Group/Individual	Event
3000-2151 BC	Egyptians	Hesi-Re is earliest dentist known by name.
900-300 BC	Mayans	Teeth receive attention for religious reasons or self-adornment.
460-322 BC	Greeks	Hippocrates and Aristotle write about tooth decay.
166-201 AD	Romans	Restore decayed teeth with gold crowns
570-950	Muslims	Use Siwak as a primitive toothbrush
1510-1590	Ambroise Paré	Writes extensively about dentistry, including extractions
1678-1761	Pierre Fauchard	Becomes “Father of Modern Dentistry”
1728-1793	John Hunter	Performs first scientific study of teeth
1844	Horace Wells	Uses nitrous oxide for relief of dental pain
1859		American Dental Association is founded.
1885	C. Edmund Kells	Employs first dental assistant
1895	G.V. Black	Becomes “Grand Old Man of Dentistry” and perfects amalgam
1895	W.C. Roentgen	Discovers x-rays
1908	Frederick McKay	Discovers that fluoride is connected with prevention of dental caries
1913	Alfred C. Fones	Establishes first dental hygiene school in Bridgeport, Connecticut
1924		American Dental Assistants Association is founded.
1947		Dental Assisting National Board is founded.
1970	Congress	Creates Occupational Safety and Health Administration
1978	Journal of the American Dental Association	Publishes a report on infection control for dental offices
1982		First hepatitis B vaccine becomes commercially available
2000		Oral Health in America: A Report of the Surgeon General is released.
2003	Centers for Disease Control and Prevention	Releases Guidelines for Infection Control in Dental Health-Care Settings—2003

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (rent-ken) (1845-1923) was a Bavarian physicist who discovered x-rays, or radiographs, in 1895 (Figure 1-1). His discovery revolutionized diagnostic capabilities and forever changed the practice of medicine and dentistry.

Figure 1-1 Roentgen discovered the early potential of a radiograph beam in 1895.

C. Edmund Kells (1856-1928), a New Orleans dentist, is usually credited with employing the first dental assistant (Figure 1-2). In 1885 the first “lady assistant” was really a “lady in attendance” who made it respectable for a woman patient to visit a dental office unaccompanied. The assistant helped with office duties, and by 1900, Dr. Kells was working with both a chairside dental assistant and a secretarial assistant. Soon other dentists saw the value of dental assistants and began to train dental assistants in their own offices.

Figure 1-2 Dr. C. Edmund Kells and his “working unit.”

African Americans in Dental History

African Americans were not accepted for training at any dental schools until 1867, when Harvard University initiated its first dental class and accepted Robert Tanner Freeman as its first black student. Since then, African Americans have been appointed deans and faculty members at a number of American dental schools. Ida Gray-Rollins (1867-1953) was the first African American woman in the United States to earn a dental degree. She practiced dentistry in Chicago until she retired in 1928 (Table 1-2).

TABLE 1-2

Highlights of African Americans in Dentistry

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Date	Group/Individual	Event
1765	Peter Hawkins	Native-born, an itinerant preacher in Richmond, Virginia, did extractions for parishioners.
1851	John S. Rock	Awarded a silver medal for making artificial teeth. Examples of his work were exhibited by the Benjamin Franklin Institute.
1869	Robert Tanner Freeman	First African American dentist to receive the DMD degree from Harvard University.
1963	Andrew Z. Kellar	Published “The epidemiology of lip, oral and pharyngeal cancers” in the American Journal of Public Health.
1967	Van E. Collins	First African American dentist in regular military service to be promoted to the rank of colonel.
1973	Konneta Putman	Installed as the president of the American Dental Hygienists Association.
1975	Jeanne C. Sinkford	First African American female dean of a U.S. dental school.
1989	Raymond J. Fonseca	Appointed dental dean at the University of Pennsylvania.
1994	Juliann Bluitt	The first woman dentist elected president of the American College of Dentists.
1994	Caswell A. Evans	The first African American dentist elected president of the American Public Health Association.
	Eugenia Mobley	The first African American woman dentist to earn a degree in public health and the second female dean of a U.S. dental school.
	Clifton O. Dummett	Distinguished professor emeritus of the University of Southern California School of Dentistry and author and historian for the National Dental Association.