The Harvard School of Dental Medicine, unique in its field for its combination medical and dental training, yesterday received a grant of $5,000 for an extensive study of mouth cancer.

This grant, approved by the United States Public Health Service was part of a $689,685 award to medical and dental students throughout the country for cancer study. The agency explained the grant by saying that the knowledge of 8,994 students in 32 medical schools regarding cancer has shown a wide disparity.

"The average score of seniors in one school was 50 percent greater than that of seniors in another school," the agency report stated yesterday in a report released by Howard R. Bierman, director of the tests.

The Dental-Medical school has not as yet announced how it plans to use the money but it is expected that the funds will be applied to the two year preliminary period when the dental student studies anatomy, bacteriology, pharmacology and basic diseases of the mouth.

Medical schools at Tufts, College of Virginia at Richmond and George Washington also received grants from the Health Service. Tufts was the only other Dental school to receive a grant.

The Harvard School of Dental Medicine, which is now in its sixth year of operation, installed their joint medical-dental course in 1941 when President Conant decided that "educational pioneering was necessary to bring about important advances in dentistry."

The program was abandoned during the war when the Army wouldn't accept its training but Dean James M. Dunning of the Dental School now claims that the school will never return to the conventional method of dental school train-