I realize that advertising is "unethical" among dentists as among physicians. Humbug and imposition are supposed to go inevitably with self-advertising by the methods used in selling shoes or automobiles. Therefore such advertising is prohibited. But what seems to be forgotten in this definition of ethics is that the need and the opportunity for dental care must be advertised in some way, if we are ever to control diseases and evils due to bad teeth. The rich that one dentist can help are able to pay for his good taste, his neat attendants, his automobile, his club dues, his vacations at fashionable resorts, his hours without work, his standard of living. All of these things advertise him, just as hospital appointments and social position may and do advertise successful physicians. The patients of moderate means that one dentist can treat cannot afford to pay for rent, time disengaged, and indirect advertising. Either they must have free treatment, must go without treatment, or must go to a dental parlor where dental needs are organized so that a very large number will contribute to rent and display. It is out of the question to have both dentists and patients so distributed and prices so adjusted that dentists can make a good living by charging what the patient can afford, and at the same time admit of every patient being properly treated when necessary. Judging from every other branch of work, the solution of the problem lies partly in free care for those who can pay nothing or very little, and partly in coöperative treatment through the heretofore objectionable dental parlors. If instead of inveighing against advertisers, honorable and capable dentists worked through dental and medical societies to secure adequate public supervision of dental practice, more progress would be made against dental malpractice.
Dental clinics will quickly follow the publication of facts that schools should gather. In some places these should be separate; but at first the best thing is to make every hospital, every children's home, every settlement a clinic, and every school an examining center. A skilled dentist informs me: "The demand that will follow examination of school children's teeth will make it profitable for young dentists to adopt a coöperative scheme, where several young men hire a parlor in a cheap district, and, under the supervision of some experienced dentist, give good advice at reasonable rates. This is the best antidote to the dental parlor which exploits the public so shamelessly." Bellevue Hospital in New York is the first general hospital to establish regular dental examination; others will undoubtedly soon follow.