The transformation of the dental services market and the battle over a monopoly in 19th century dental practice

Abstract

The article analyzes the process by which dentistry acquired the status of a profession. The setting is the mid-nineteenth-century United States, where the West's first professional dental organizations were founded, and the focus is on some aspects of the development of a dental market and on the professional disputes among practitioners of the dental trade, who wanted a monopoly within this field of knowledge. Certain outside factors played a major role in the emergence of the profession, including changes in patterns of sugar consumption (which spread dental caries disease throughout society) as well as the expansion of the dental service market. The subsequent proliferation of distinct groups of dental practitioners - both qualified and unqualified to practice dentistry - and their competition for a place in the dental market reflect the battle waged to establish jurisdiction in this field and the emergence of dentistry as a 'modern profession'.