Heredity versus practice / by Lilian Lindsay.

  • Lindsay, Lilian.
Date:
[1949?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Heredity versus practice / by Lilian Lindsay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Sometimes another method was employed for expansion by wedges, Norman Kings¬ ley says “ Wedges are also an important source of power.” “ By the proper adjust¬ ment of wedges they can be made to do more in the length of time than all screws, pulleys, levers or inclined planes.” The rapidity with which this method worked is illustrated by the fact that in twenty days upper teeth in lingual occlusion could be forced into normal occlusion. Wedges were inserted between all the teeth. That this sometimes led later to disastrous loss of all the teeth with other more unfortunate Fig. io results, has been recorded. Kingsley claimed “ The individual features being naturally well formed and symmetrical the change in their relations produced a face of more than usual beauty.” As the practice of this drastic measure seems to have died out it is evident that its dire effects were recognised. Carabelli seems to have been the first, to classify occlusion, this was into eight classes mordex normalis, mordex rectus, mordex apertus, mordex prorsus, mordex retrorsus, mordex tortuosus, mordex sen¬ ilis, os senile. To these we may now add a ninth from Professor Friel’s classic work on occlusion, mordex infantile. The mention of occlusion naturally brings to mind the name of Edward Angle who reduced these classes to three with divisions. His powerful personality in the world of orthodontics occupied the same position as did that of Galen in the world of medicine. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame was as the first to establish a school for training orthodontists, not a mere post graduate course, but a full specialist education for the practice of orthodontics. Students resorted to this school from all parts of the world and in this way his teaching became almost universal, and he was a bold man who would gainsay that teaching. Such a man was William Rushton who showed (contrary to Angle) that beauty of face could exist associated with malocclusion, and that the retention of the full comple¬ ment of thirty teeth so far from enhancing may mar that beauty. The great psychologist and physiogn¬ omist Dickens emphasised this with weari¬ some reiteration in the character of Carker in Dombey and Son “ An unbroken row of gleaming teeth whose whiteness and regularity were quite distressing ... his smile had something in it of the snarl of a cat.” Nevertheless the followers of Angle held extraction of a tooth a violation of the laws according to Angle. So great was that influence it engendered a kind of bigotry among his followers and when Mr. j. H. Badcock went to the Orthodontic Congress in 1926 to read a paper on the value of extraction in the treatment of irregularities he was regarded as bearding the lion in his den. Mr. Rushton held that mouth breathing was responsible for much irregularity and Warwick James, Northcroft and Dickin designed mouth screens for wearing at night. Robin with his monobloc and Andresen with his Norwegian system are of the same category. Outstanding among those who base their treatment upon the laws of the physiology of the tissues is Sim Wallace,
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