[Relativity and limits of success yesterday and today]

A comparing of today's dentistry and the time limits of its success with dental medecine of yesterday, we state an unquestionable advance in the preventive field. Causes of caries and parodontopathies are so well known that proper preventive measures have shown, within the last twenty years, statistically relevant success. Such positive results may be endangered by politics which tend to eliminate personal responsibility and which establish insurance systems by which even the most expensive dental restorations must be paid by the collective community. Thus prophylactic measures become unimportant to the individual. Preventive thinking has various facets: The system of filling gaps and holes must yield to the system of rehabilitation at every level. The basis to this is a high standard of professional ethics. Its realization is easier if dentistry is not subdivided into too many specialties. On the other hand, the dentist must have a large spectrum of knowledge, which is only obtainable through continuous education. The younger generations are profiting most from this development of knowledge, but the old and the handicapped should not be forgotten in the process. It will be one of the noblest tasks of the profession henceforward to care for the treatment of this dentally underpriviledged part of our population.