Ethics – dentistry and tooth-drawing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in England. Evidence of provision at all levels of society

Ethics: how the Apothecaries Act of 1815 shaped the dental profession. Part 1. The Apothecaries and the emergence of the profession of dentistry

The Apothecaries Act of 1815, (revised by the Act of 1825) has been credited with being the most important forward step in the education of the general medical profession in the nineteenth century, although a closely argued revisionist view of its significance by S W F Holloway makes clear his view that it was also a successful and deeply reactionary political move by the physicians to emasculate a rival group growing rapidly in numbers and power. This paper demonstrates that the Act also created a distance between the true dentists and others, like the chemists and druggists, who carried out dental functions. By so doing the Act defined the social identity of the profession of dentistry, in its numbers, status, nineteenth century reform and pattern of education. The paper proposes the apothecary/general medical practitioner as a social as well as ethical role model for the general dental practitioner.