Journal of Dental Research

Journal of Dental Research http://jdr.sagepub.com International Association for Dental Research: Proceedings of the Thirty-First General Meeting Philadelphia, Pa. March 20, 21, 22, 1953 Hamilton B.G. Robinson J DENT RES 1953; 32; 628 DOI: 10.1177/00220345530320051001 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jdr.sagepub.com Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: International and American Associations for Dental Research Additional services and information for Journal of Dental Research can be found at: Email Alerts: http://jdr.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://jdr.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Downloaded from http://jdr.sagepub.com by on January 1, 2010 INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR DENTAL RESEARCH PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTY-FIRST GENERAL MEETING PHILADELPHIA, PA. MARCH 20, 21, 22, 1953 COMPILED BY HAMILTON B. G. ROBINSON,* EDITOR, COLLEGE OF DENTISTRY, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, COLUMBUS, OHIO I. General Information 628 II. President's Address, Francis A. Arnold, Jr. (National Institute of Dental Research). 628 III. Index of participants and sequence numbers for abstracts - 632 IV. Abstracts of papers read in General Meeting sessions; Abstracts 1-145 _ 633 V. Abstracts of papers presented by title; Abstracts 146-187 _ _ _ _ 693 VI. Abstracts of papers read in Materials Group sessions; Abstracts 188-212 709 VII. Executive Proceedings- 716 VIII. Constitutional Amendments- 720 IX. Index of newly elected officers and members --721 I. GENERAL INFORMATION The Thirty-First General Meeting was held in eight general sessions, four of which were presented in two sections each. At these general meetings a total of 145 papers were presented, and 41 were read by title. The Materials Group coordinated its meeting with the General Meeting and heard 25 papers at four sessions.t At the closing executive meeting Dr. John J. Salley of the Uni- versity of Rochester received the first Novice Award and Dr. Francis A. Arnold, Jr., delivered his presidential address. Council meetings and the Board of Editors meeting were held during the General Meeting. The meetings of the International Association for Dental Research were attended by 229 members and 352 registered guests. II. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS: TRENDS IN RESEARCH FRANCIS A. ARNOLD, JR. National Institute of Dental Research, Bethesda, Md. Since the beginning of this Association, some three decades ago, the incoming president has been privileged to address the membership at his inauguration. Some of those speeches will endure through the years as models of erudition and as statements of dental research accomplishments. In the last two years, however, your program committee has wisely planned to bestow the additional virtue of brevity on the inaugural address, so that as much time as possible can be allotted to the more important scientific sessions of our annual meeting. It is this fact-namely, the realization that the philosophical has its place, but that it must follow and derive from the experimental-that furnishes me with the text of this address on "Trends in Dental Research." *The editor was generously assisted in the preparation of these proceedings by the secretary, Dr. Edward H. Hatton, and by the assistant secretary, Dr. Dan Y. Burrill. tA new innovation was an early Sunday morning session at which Dr. Joseph Volker spoke on "Science and Religion." 628 Downloaded from http://jdr.sagepub.com by on January 1, 2010 Volume 32 I. A. D. R.: THIRTY-FIRST GENERAL MEETING 629 Nurne:- 5 I wish first to express my gratitude for the honor you have bestowed upon me. I can readily remember the occasion, almost twenty years ago, when I attended my first meeting of this Association. I deemed it an honor then to be able to participate in the proceedings of that meeting, and each succeeding meeting has rekindled that feeling. So, today, I can assure you that I appreciate the opportunity and the responsibility of assisting in guiding during the coming year the destinies of the International Association for Dental Research. Coincidentally with assuming new responsibilities as president of this Association, I have had the good fortune to assume the responsibilities of another office whose objectives are closely allied with those of this organiza- tion. I have just this month become director of the Public Health Service's National Institute of Dental Research. The assumption of these two positions of trust has caused me to take stock of myself and to reassess the activities in the field of dental research. I do not have the temerity to predict the future course of dental research, but a review of the past history of this Association and the activities of its members presents certain clear guidelines which have marked the gradual evolvement of our present-day research patterns and may be useful indications of what can be expected in the future. Anyone attempting even a cursory review of the dental research literature of the past thirty years (as reflected largely in the pages of our own Journal) must surely be impressed with the changes that have occurred in this field. While many of the problems are unchanged, to me it is most significant that our approaches to these problems have undergone major reorientation as have, indeed, our attitudes toward research in general. In the early issues of the Journal, considerable space was allocated to philosophical discussions of the purpose and aims of the Journal and later of the Association. The scientific reports, which comprised only a portion of each publication, were usually scholarly dissertations on a broad subject of fairly general interest. It was editorial policy, or common practice of the contributing group, to include rather lengthy discussions of the published manuscript. This practice continued throughout the first decade of publication. In contrasting such papers with the type of material published today, one gets the impression that many of the early contributions were deliberately chosen for their inspirational and educational value. A large number of "research" papers were in the nature of reviews of specific subjects, and most of them closed with an exhortation to the researcher and clinician to look more carefully and critically into the problems of dental research. Consider- ing the status of dental research at that time, the desirability of such publica- tions can well be recognized. Very few of the practicing dentists had the benefit of basic training in the scientific aspects of their profession and, for example, the 1930 edition of American lien of Science listed only five dentists as research scientists. It is encouraging to note that the 1950 edition lists almost 200 names from this Association alone. In the very first volume of the Journal there appears an article in which the authors express this teaching philosophy. Drs. Lederur and Riethmueller in concluding an article devoted principally to case reports on oral tumors said, "It is our hope that this contribution will help to stimulate closer attention, on the part of the general practitioner, to early recognition of neo- plasms and that it will discourage haphazard and temporizing attempts at operation, which have caused many a patient to seek surgical aid too late." Another factor which may have contributed to the difference in the type of research report appearing at present, as compared to thirty years Downloaded from http://jdr.sagepub.com by on January 1, 2010 J. D. Res. 630 HAMILTON B. G. ROBINSON October, 1953 ago, is the change in research itself. Much of the dental research at that time seems to have been conducted with a definite application in mind, as, for example, the improvement of treatment materials, procedures, and technics. As important as such developmental studies may have been, their results seldom produce the type of basic evidence essential to a full under- standing of the underlying biologic problem-namely, the disease itself. It is true that in addition to the developmental type of research, there was a good deal of work going on three or four decades ago in the study both of the basic structure and properties of normal oral tissues, and of the underlying causes of oral pathologies. Again, when one looks over the reports of these researches, he notes evidence of a specifically planned approach. It seems to me that we had a situation analogous to that found in the related sciences of medicine, chemistry, and bacteriology when a few outstanding workers dominated each field of endeavor. It was an era of concepts and schools of thought, and most of the research effort was directed at proving or disproving current hypotheses. Today, we have more or less broken away from this philosophy, and we concern ourselves with establishing fundamental facts about biologic phenomena. Research planning is no longer predicated on the testing of previously established postulates. It is, instead, motivated by the desire for basic knowledge, which, when amassed in sufficient quantity, will lead plainly and precisely to the solution of the existing problems. All of this has been most succinctly expressed by Dr. Irving Langmuir, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, who said, "Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from a planned search for specific objectives. A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the scientist to follow his own curiosity in search of truth." Many of you who have visited the Dental Institute in Bethesda may have seen this quotation hanging on the wall in Dr. Trendley Dean's office. It has come to be our motto, and we will continue to live by it. Today, as the horizons in dental research are growing broader, the activities are growing sharper with the realization of the need for highly specialized knowledge in the many different aspects of the oral disease problem.

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