In 1932 less than one quarter of the Dental School was made up of college graduates. In 1936 half of its students has their Bachelor of Arts degree, and although the last two year man was admitted in 1950, today only 75 per cent of the student body is made up of college graduates. The newness of the concept of dental study on the graduate plan thus becomes apparent.

Furthermore, the Dental School faculty served gratis until 1929. A bequest of Charles A. Brackett D.M.D. '73, who taught without pay at the School for half a century, and a gift of John T. Morse, Jr. '60 led to the endowment fund which began to pay the institution's teachers in that year. Serious dental study is plainly, then, a recent development, but the field's trend, as shown by Eliot's words and climaxed by Conant's action, is no sudden offshoot. It grew with dentistry.

Dr. C. Sidney Burwell M.D. '91, writing in 1941 as Dean of the Harvard Medical School, stated: "The present tendency of medical organization is centripetal rather than centrifugal... The deevlopment of special interests, special knowledge, and special expertness has been extremely valuable in the improvement of medical practice, the effectiveness of teaching, and the success of investigation. It is equally true, however, that special fields cannot exist by themselves, but that they must remain, if they are to service, in an appropriate relation to the general fields, of medicine...

"Because the teeth are part of the body and exposed to the traumas, the disorders of growth, the intoxications, the infections, the dietary deficiencies, and all the other influences that cause disease of other parts of the body, the study, understanding, and management of dental and oral disease require a biologic and medical preparation not inferior to, and indeed not essentially different from, the preparation required for the study, understanding and management of disease of other parts of the body."

Master Dentists

People spoke, but no one took any action. Dr. Milton C. Winternitz stood up at Yale and tried to organize a "master dentist" plan. He proposed that a dentist who also held a medical degree be placed in charge of clinics of regular dentist, and that the dentists consult the master dentist on all cases in order to be sure that every complication was take care of. He was laughed down.

Yale did accept a plan, however, which the Rockfeller Foundation sponsored, to invite two outstanding young dental teachers to take their M.D. at New Haven. Dr. David Weisberger D.M.D. '30 of the Harvard Dental School staff was selected for the program and emerged from it "more informed, grateful, but much older." He had to take the full fouryear course for his M.D. although he had taken courses in the first and second-year subjects when he attended Harvard Dental. The difference was that at the Dental School, the courses had the same names but only half the material.

Separate, Unequal

"There is a great deal of difference between a similar course and an identical course," Weisberger says. "The pay-off is, can you get credit for it? I came to Harvard Dental because of the great names listed in the catalogue as teaching the basic science courses. But I never saw the great names as people. I saw the tenth assistant. And I was never given the same course as the fellow over at the Medical School."

Meanwhile Conant determined to reorganize dental education at Harvard. Conant formed a committee chaired by Dean Burwell of the Medical School and told it to bring its recommendations to the Medical Faculty. This immediately drew protest from dentists, who didn't want to be "railroaded by their big brother" and who forgot that the Dental and Medical Faculties had been combined under the Dean of the Medical Faculty in 1899.

In 1939 the group brought in its recommendations. It proposed a five-year plan, whereby a student would receive both his M.D. and D.M.D. simultaneously at the end of five years of study. Three and a half years were to be spent in medicine and one and a half in dentistry.

Somehow the report leaked to the Boston Globe in May, 1939, and when the story was printed, it was a severe jolt to many people. No dentist felt that his learning could be matched in one and a half years of clinical study. And no dentist liked seeing his profession given second billing to medicine.

The University, in addition, was having trouble in getting the funds to support its new idea. The Dental School had planned to carry on a two and a half million dollar campaign itself, but the University asked for the School's list of prospective donors for its own $30,000,000 drive. In return, the Dental School was promised five million. The University campaign failed miserable, and the Dental School got nothing.

At the end of 1939, however, the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockfeller Foundation, and the Markle Foundation gave the money required for putting the plan into operation. It was at this same time that Conant announced that the Dental School would operate under a new name, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

Official in '40