The Daytona daily news. [volume] (Daytona, Fla.) 1903-1926, 1915-03-17
AMERICAN DENTISTS HELP MAKE
FRENCH ARMY Fl FOR SERVICE
Remarkable Operations Performed on Wounded Soldiers arouse
Interest in New Aspect Of War Sugey-PIece Of Rib SUD-
sttuted for Jawbone-Arnies Of the World Slow to Rec
oqnize importance Of Work Done by Tooth Doctors.

Paris.-A capital professional inter
est attaches to the dental department
Of the American ambulance ut Neuilly.
Perhaps never before, certainly never
since dental science took on the char
acter Of surgery Of the face" has
there been such an opportunity for
dentists. The number and variety Of
injuries to the lower part Of the face
which have been presented by the
wounded from the battlefelds along
the Marne and Aisno has never been
surpassed in even the most remarkable
railway accidents, those other feasts
Of dentists.
It is due again to American ingenu-
ity and independence that the dental
aspect Of war surgery has been given
any chance. First of all Americans
are the best dentists. as they were the
first practical ones. In this branch OF
medicine Europe still goes to school to
America. Then, too, the American am.
bulance was founded under such con.
ditions of freedom from bureaucratic
control that 1t was possible for the
eminent head surgeon, Doctor Du Bou.
Chef, himself son Of a dentist and a
brother of one, to turn over to spe-
cial department all Jaw cases without
stirring up rivalries between grades OF
surgeons and physicians and dentists
with different kinds and colors OF
stripes on their sleeves.
In the French hospitals dental oper-
ating has not been nearly SO success
full, not only because the French den
fist is not mechanically and medically
SO competent as his American con-
frere, but even more pronouncedly be-
cause the dentists military grade Is
necessarily lower than the physician
or surgeons.
Dentists In U. s. Army.
In the English army. too, there are
no places regularly reserved for den.
lists. In fact the American is the only
army for which dentists are regularly
engaged just as surgeons are, and in
the American army the grade of the
dentist, that of first lieutenant, from
which he cannot rise, is far from salts.
factory to the profession in general.
The result Of this particularly bad
foresight on the part Of the French
military bureaucrats is that no pro-
vision can be made for the curing Of
injuries to the jaw. because 1t Is out
of the question for surgeons to attempt
to do dental work. At the American
ambulance now the dental department
is receiving many cases for reopera-
ton from eminently competent sur
geons.
The case of a man whose jaw, two
thirds shot away, was sewn and pieced
together so that 1t was all out of line
and whose lips, ripped to pieces by the
ball which destroyed his mouth and
left only fragments hanging about his
neck, were so sewed up that his beard
was growing away prosperously inside
his mouth and tickling the roof of it,
leaving the patient unable to speak
and scarcely able to eat, was only one
Of dozens. In six weeks the American
dentist treating this man had the jaw
and lips back again in normal position
and a monstrous face Is turned into
one which only dentist could ever
tell had been injured.
1t would be folly for anyone but
dentist to attemnt IN describe in
their technical aspect the peculiar
character Of the problems presented
for solution in the dental clinic Of the
American ambulance.
Rib In Place Of JaWbone.
Roughly speaking, the injuries which
the writer actually saw one morning
in the clinic were about as much worse
'""" those renorted. in photorrnnhe