Landon Blatter: A Brief History of Dental Education in the US

1. Landon Blatter: A Brief History
of Dental Education in the US

2. Rocky Mountain Dental Partners president and
managing dentist Landon Blatter earned his DMD
from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

3. Dentistry was an art that was brought to the
American colonies with its settlers. The famous
preacher Cotton Mather addressed dental topics
in his writings on medical matters, and his home
remedies were widely practiced. John Baker, who
arrived from England in 1760, is considered the
first dental preceptor, or teacher. The first native-
born American dentist is said to have been Isaac
Greenwood, whose three sons also became
dentists; son John was one of the dentists who
attended to George Washington’s dental needs.
Paul Revere, who studied under John Baker,
helped identify war casualties by their bridgework,
and is considered the father of American forensic
dentistry.

4. The majority of those who practiced dentistry in America
before the middle of the 19th century, though, were either
self-trained amateurs or had learned the trade as an
apprentice. Many were barbers, a tradition dating to
medieval times. The world’s first dental school was
established in the late 1820s in Bainbridge, Ohio, by
John Harris, and was followed by the Baltimore College
of Dental Surgery in 1839. However, these were stand-
alone institutions as the medical schools of the time
viewed dentistry with disdain, and by 1865 there were
only four dental schools in the US, admission to which
generally required only a grammar school education. The
tide turned in 1867 when Harvard University formed the
Harvard Dental School (now the Harvard School of
Dental Medicine), the first dental school affiliated with a
university medical school.

5. Modern dental education generally requires
completion of a bachelor’s degree before
undertaking a rigorous course of study at an
accredited dental school. Those who graduate
and pass licensing exams may practice privately
or as part of a group practice, but many elect to
complete a residency or internship to hone their
skills and learn one of the nine recognized dental
specialties, such as endodontics, orthodontics,
periodontics, or pediatric dentistry.

6. Modern dental education generally requires
completion of a bachelor’s degree before
undertaking a rigorous course of study at an
accredited dental school. Those who graduate
and pass licensing exams may practice privately
or as part of a group practice, but many elect to
complete a residency or internship to hone their
skills and learn one of the nine recognized dental
specialties, such as endodontics, orthodontics,
periodontics, or pediatric dentistry.