The Founders' and Benefactors' Lecture. General dental practice--the evolution of a discipline

My subject is the development of general dental practice from its roots in antiquity; through the Victorian concerns to protect the public by formalising registration and training; past the present day with our enthusiasms for postgraduate education and on into the future. In the course of this journey, I will seek to demonstrate that general practice is changing from the provider of basic solutions to basic problems and becoming a complex, multi-layered career. Indeed, that it is becoming a discipline in its own right.