DENTISTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 897, 27 September 1910, Page 3

DENTISTS.

Interviewed by a Daily Times reporter, Dr. Pickerill, director of the Otago Dental School, made some pointed remarks on the subject* of the suggested amendment of the Dentists’ Act. “ The proposed amendment to the Dentists’ Act in favour of allowing unskilled and untrained men to practice dentistry,” said Dr Pickerill, “is being viewed with very great disfavour by the dental profession throughout the Dominion, and the New Zealand Dental Association is doing its best to point out the seriousness of such a retrograde proposal. Any such amendment would be most unfair to the public since the Government has spent large sums of public money in providing a dental school, where men receive proper training. The public therefore has a right to demand that the dentists who operate on them shall be sufficiently skilled. And yet it is now proposed to allow a certain number of men to practice on the public without that training. Moreover, any such proposal to permit special individuals to evade the law as it at present stands is manifestly unfair to those students who are at present complying with the law and undergoing a prescribed course of training at the Dentist School. It is the worst possible thing for the petitioners to allow themselves to fancy that they can succeed in the practice of their profession if thev are only half-educated. If is not desired to close the profession to ‘able young men who were not possessed of capital,’ to quote one of the speakers iu the House. If the cost of a dental education is too great, then obviously the only just way in which to meet the difficulty is to reduce the cost of dental education, and not to turn out untrained persons on the public.”