Origins of Dental Education and Training in the USA and UK.

This paper is based on a talk given at a dinner hosted by the American Academy of the History of Dentistry. It examines some early efforts towards dental education and training on both sides of the Atlantic. For British attendees I dealt (and thus in this paper) especially with the roles of Horace Hayden and Chapin Harris in developing formal dental training in the United States of America. For Americans, I contrast those developments with how dentistry arose in the United Kingdom. Major figures such as John Tomes were involved, with close links to surgery. The first qualifications in the USA were degrees whereas in the UK they were Royal College of Surgeons diplomas, degrees only being awarded from 1906.