Excerpt from The Science and Practice of Dental Surgery

IN submitting this work to my colleagues in the Dental Profession, I feel that a few intro ductory remarks may not be out of place. Dental Surgery has advanced so rapidly Within recent years, both in the many branches of science on which it is based and in the intricacies of manipu lative procedure, that the production of a new comprehensive work by a single writer has become almost an impossibility. Certain defects are usually associated with, if not necessarily inherent in, a'work by many writers, and one object that I have had in mind, from the commencement of the long period during which the work has been as continuously in hand as the demands of other duties permitted, has been to eliminate these defects as far as possible. I have endeavoured to impart unity of conception and style to the whole, and to prevent overlapping except where it seemed permissible that a particular subject should be presented from different points of view. Cross-references have been liberally inserted. Another object that I have had in view has been to combine the scientific with the practical, for neither is of much value to the practitioner without the other, and in a work of this kind it is desirable that their mutual interdependence should be brought prominently before the reader. The work does not represent any particular school of thought; the contributors belong not only to the United Kingdom but to the most distant parts of the Dominions beyond the Seas, and an effort has been made to include everything in pathology or practice, from whatever country or source, that might be of value to the modern practitioner. Obsolete theories in pathology or abandoned methods of treatment have been omitted, or only briefly referred to where their historical interest is great.

In all these objects I have been well supported by my contributors, and I wish to take this opportunity of thanking them most sincerely for the careful way in which they have considered the principles laid down, and written their chapters in conformity with the scheme that I outlined; and also for allowing me so much freedom in making such alterations as I thought necessary in the interest of uniformity.

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