ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, Fauchard’s writings in Le Chirurgien Dentiste were used to view the activities of the new group of specialist surgeons who appeared around the start of the eighteenth century in Paris, taking the descriptive and celebratory title of chirurgien dentiste. This reading of Fauchard illustrated the way in which the practice of the dentiste was built using both hand and mind - that is, not only on the acquisition of practical skill and manual experience, but also on the creation and extension of a body of theoretical knowledge, coupled to experience gained in how and when to apply that knowledge. We have seen how the development of this science was considered by some surgeons to have rendered the whole art of surgery complete: an art so wide-ranging that the chirurgien dentiste, practising a part of it only, could be consid ered as a particular surgeon in his own right and could therefore gain acceptance by those occupying the very highest levels of the French surgical hierarchy.
