FAUCHARD Pierre Le Chirurgien dentiste, ou Traité des dents. Deuxième édition.

Morton, 3671, and Norman, 768 (first edition 1728).

Second, enlarged edition, with the addition of a “good description of pyorrhoea alveolaris” (Garrison-Morton) and two plates depicting newly designed dentures.

From a very young age, Pierre Fauchard (1678-1761) worked as a “dental expert” in Anjou and Brittany, before moving to Paris in 1719, where his reputation “continued to grow, and the publication of his book placed him firmly among the “greats” of Parisian medicine and surgery. His book was in fact a pioneering work, making him the founding father of modern dentistry, as it was the first work to deal with a “branch of the healing art” that had been left to charlatans or to empiricists who practised in lamentable conditions. By turns anatomist, pathologist, therapist and hygienist, Fauchard provides, with the knowledge of his time, a complete picture of a specialty that we now call odontostomatology” (see : Marie-José Imbault-Hurat, En français dans le texte).

“Pierre Fauchard has been called the “father of dentistry”; his comprehensive and scientific account of all that concern dentistry in the 18th century is one of the greatest books in the history of the subject” (Garrison-Morton).

“[This work] inspired an immediate increase in the number of important books by dental practitioners” (Norman).

“Fauchard summarized in his pages with numerous illustrations all that was best in the practice of his day and disclosed what has been hitherto  jealously guarded secrets. Le Chirugien Dentiste – The Surgeon Dentist, or a Treatise on the Teeth, with instruction on the means of maintaining them Sound and Healthy – is in fact the first scientific work on its subject, and modern dentistry begins with its publication. Fauchard describes in the fullest detail the procedure in operative dentistry, in the filling of teeth and most especially in prothesis, which is that part of dental surgery concerned with artificial dentures, bridge work and the like… He used antiseptic methods in filling teeth long before the germ theory of infection… Fauchard was the true pioneer of dental surgery” (PMM).

“No other individual in the history of dentistry played a more important role in its development than Fauchard… Publication of the present work in 1728 was immediately hailed as a major development in the dental profession because it incorporated the entire doctrine of theoretical and practical dentistry as it was then known and practiced” (Heirs, 785).

Portrait slightly shorter in lower margin, plates with rubber stamp of Bibliothèque Hospitalière, Paris.