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facilities for established lesions. As a branch of preventive medicine,
it should primarily concentrate on the basic essential that
every mother should receive instruction on the origin of oral
disease and its prevention and that she should be guided and
encouraged to apply this knowledge to herself and to her child.
It should further be the clinic's responsibility to explain the scope
of modern and preventive dentistry, to foster the understanding
that extractions and dentures are not synonymous with dental
treatment and to create and maintain the correct public image in
contra-distinction to the concept of the 'dentist' who inflicts pain
in alarming surroundings.
As to treatment, it is very easy to criticise the present facilities
as inadequate and unrealistic. It is much more difficult, however,
to state exactly what optimum treatment facilities ought to be
provided. We can estimate that there are 7,500 nursing and
expectant mothers and 17,500 children under 5 years in the
Borough, and that we ought to be able to undertake the treatment
of a certain percentage of this number to help the existing and
overworked dental Health Service. Nursing and expectant mothers
as well as children are entitled to free treatment by dental practitioners
participating in the National Health Service. As far as the
mothers are concerned this arrangement works fairly well as, from
a treatment point of view, there is little difference between them
and the rest of the adult public. As far as the young child is concerned,
however, we are up against an enormous problem. The
needs of the young child in its formative period are not only for
treatment but particularly for a favourable introduction towards
laying down its attitude to dental health and a friendly dentistpatient
relationship for the rest of its future life. For this reason
it is most desirable for it to receive its initiation to dentistry in an
establishment provided exclusively for the specialised requirements
of the very young. No one conversant with the workings of the
National Health Service can or will doubt the excellence of treatment
given to the pre-school child. Smaller are the numbers of
those, however, who realise how difficult it is to afford adequate
treatment to a small child in a practice primarily and necessarily
geared to the treatment of older members of the community.
As regards the local authority dental services, rather than competing
with something already provided, it is much more desirable
that the Borough should supplement the general dental services by
providing one specially focused on the needs and requirements of
the small child. As to the nursing and expectant mothers, they
should receive guidance in the understanding and prevention of
dental disease, explanation of the effects of motherhood on the oral
tissues, and treatment for the relief of acute conditions. As the