Dentistry has evolved from medicine and more especially from the surgical aspect of what is now called medicine. Until the sixteenth century, physic and surgery were separate professions and what we now call dentistry was a part of surgery rather than of physic. For centuries physic was a calling of greater dignity than surgery. Since the major…

Until the eighteenth century, doctors were reluctant to use chemicals to alleviate pain because they accepted the religious/moral beliefs of their day, claiming that pain was beneficial for the body. Traces technical developments in the control of pain, discussing relationships of anesthesia to social, cultural, and scientific factors and…