In 1940 President Conant dismissed 120 of the 125-man staff at the Harvard Dental School and closed the 73-year-old institution. In its place he later opened the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and caused the greatest row in professional education since the Law School switched to the case system of study under Dean Langdell.

Conant sent dental students to the Medical School for basic science in struction because 1) it is better there than it was at the old Dental School and 2) it makes the dentist aware that he is dealing with a part of medicine and of the human body, not a unit in itself. Furthermore, the new School of Dental Medicine was to emphasize research as a means to preventive dentistry. Theory was to become of much more importance in the training of a practicing dentist.

Complaints

The furor burst because Conant turned a 73-year-old trend into a revolution and left some 2000 dentists "without heritage." He made the Dental School a satellite of the Medical School, which caused such a storm of protest across the country that the new ste-up wasn't recognized by any dental association for seven years. And to cap it all, at a time when only 34 per cent of the American people are receiving adequate dental care, Conant cut Harvard's yearly dentist output from 40 to 15.

All but those involved in the revolution thought Harvard had gone haywire again, and all were most out spoken in saying so. Now, of a random 12 dentists contacted in Boston--seven of them graduates of the defunct Dental School--only one would go on record with his opinion. The rest refused to be quoted by name, not because they were any less opposed to Harvard, but because they were afraid that, from the way things are progressing, they just might be wrong.

Controversy Old

The controversy began in July, 1867, when the Corporation approved the establishment of the first university dental school in the United States. It admitted its initial class in 1869 and graduated it in one year. All its members were previously physicians. By 1870 the same Corporation was already making changes. It abolished the custom, then universal among dental schools, of allowing five years of practice without a degree as the equivalent of the first year of study.

"The Harvard School was the first, and for many years the only dental school, to maintain and adhere to this principle, but it was not accomplished without disastrous effects upon the school from a pecuniary point of view," an historian wrote.

President Eliot commented in his first annual report that the Dental School was one of the "worst equipped departments in the University," mainly because it could receive no revenue from students whom Harvard policy drove elsewhere. But he was quick to comment:

"By following the example of many other dental schools and making its degree easy of acquisition, the School could undoubtedly be made to succeed as a commercial venture; but it is no object to the profession or the community that another school of low grade should be maintained, since there are more than enough of that kind already; and Harvard University may properly refuse to carry on such a school."

Thus Harvard Dental began early in bucking tradition, making changes, and adhering to them despite all odds. The controversy, in fact, which arose over the 1940-41 changes over, dates back to Eliot's report of 1873-74. He mentioned at that early date "a division of opinion in the dental profession as to the expedience of having a separate degree for dentists, some persons maintaining that every dentist should be, like an oculist or acurist, a doctor of medicine."

Eliot raised the issue even more exactly in his report of 1880-81 and actually started the upheaval which Conant carried out. "Some dentists maintain," wrote Eliot, "that a dentist, like an oculist, is a physician with a speciality, and that nothing short of the full course for the degree of Doctor of Medicine can be satisfactory; others say that a dentist is simply a fine craftsman, and that there is little use of any training except that of the eye and hand. The Harvard Dental School occupies an intermediate position, which satisfies neither of these extreme parties."

But in the same report Eliot noted, "The very instruction which the Dental Faculty now provides might be given under the direction of the Medical Faculty, and the degree of D.M.D. still be conferred upon conditions very similar to those which now obtain." In 1899, the Dental Faculty became part of the Medical Faculty.

Steady Change

The School continued on an even keel for 30 years, still leading the field in making changes, but making no change so radical that it was not soon followed by other institutions. In 1917, Harvard boosted to four years the course for the Doctor of Dental Medicine Degree, and in 1925 the Dental School established two years of college study as a prerequisite for admission.