PROFESSIONS FOR WOMEN.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1533, 31 August 1912, Page 11

PROFESSIONS FOR WOMEN.

DENTISTRY IN MELBOURNE. Dental surgery as a profession offers such-promising opportunities for women, with really profitable returns, that it seems strange that so far it has failed almost to attract them in a business senso (writes a correspondent in a Melbourne paper). There aro as many girl students anxious lo enter the overcrowded field of medicine, which entails a long and costly I raining, as thero uro few to qualify in dental surgery, though the capital required to start for one's self is considerably less than that required by .the woman doctor; also, it is ono of the few careers open to women iu. which good chances await them. The fees for a' dental training cost anything between 100 guineas and 200 guineas, and it takes from threo to four years' study to obtain a diploma. Tho student may be apprenticed to a practising dentist, or go through the prescribed course at the dental hospital, which is now affiliated with the University. It is compulsory to matriculate in physics, Latin, English, and arithmetic, and during tho first two years practice is gained on a dummy mouth; then comes practical experience with patients, in gold fillings, extractions, and the use of local anaesthetics. When qualified a position as surgical assistant,or managing a practice for an absentee at £4 to .£6 weekly is easily secured. The demand for competent woman dentists is a good way in advance of the supply. At present there are only five practising in and around Melbourne, and the success they have achieved should serve to turn the thoughts of others in the same direction. A qualified girl student who went as a surgical assistant to Gippsland, at a wage of £i, though in a measure handicapped by having to support her widowed mother, saved sufficient in two years to buy the practice, and is now in a flourishing way of business; but she had plenty of enthusiasm for her work, without which nothing is achieved. For those who aro unable to find fees for a full course, thero is open the, mechanical branch of tho work, for which it is necessary to be well up in the

rudiments of anatomy. That there is plenty of work and good money awaiting tho competent woman who will set up a workshop and take in piece work is the opinion of a .popular woman dontist. A peat many changes have been wrought of late for the benefit of working women which they do not seem to fully realise. Especially does this apply to their choico : of work.