[The Great War 1914-1918 and oral and maxillofacial surgery]

One hundred years ago the Great War, also known as the first world war, started. Historians consider the attack on the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 18, 1914 as the cause of the catastrophe. The initial war of movement turned into a 'Sitz Krieg', trench warfare. Many hundreds of thousands of military casualties were treated for a wide variety of facial wounds that resulted from the conflict. The origin of the specialisation oralmaxillofacial surgery is considered to be a consequence of these treatments. Several treatments dating from the first world war are still in use, such as the application of the 'dental splint' in fracture treatment, intra-oral transposition flaps for sealing small injuries and bone transplants from the iliac crest to restore defects of the jaw. In the Netherlands, which was neutral, experiences from the Great War were retained by the appointment in 1919 of a Lecturer in Oral Diagnosis and Oral Surgery at the University of Utrecht.