Books on Children's Dental Health and Their Authors

Books relating to dental care of children go back many years. This includes care by mothers and the rise of good clinical treatments and prevention by dentists. Most early books were written by a single author. As dentistry developed it became necessary to bring in writers with specialist knowledge, for example on dental materials. In 1952 Walter McBride wrote that children were sometimes described as being "temperamental and hysterical, notional and incorrigible". Many practitioners saw them as small adults and offered little treatment. Often they had no idea how to comfort children (Fig. 1). Some dental offices displayed notices that children under the age of 12 years would not be seen. Advice on handling was needed. Books were needed to encourage more dentists to treat children and to raise standards amongst practitioners already treating them. This paper documents and discusses early books that have appeared since 1853. Although of course much care advanced with increased knowledge and skills, it is fascinating to see how much we might still recognize today from the earliest publications.