EARLY RECORDS

The scientific progress of oral surgery has had high and low points over recorded history, start- ing with the hieroglyphic descriptions of frac- tures and dislocations of the facial bones in Egypt in 1700 B.C. In boo B.C., Etruscan gold wire was probably used to stabilize mandibular fractures. Hippocrates (C.460-C.375 B.C.) described man- dibular fracture treatment. The Greeks of that time are also known to have used a type of dental extraction forceps.

The record of European pioneers in oral surgery shows that Ambrose Pare (15 IO-I 569) trans- planted teeth, set jaw fractures, and built obtu-

rators for cleft and perforated palates. i In I 542, the Company of Barber-Surgeons received its charter from King Henry VIII, in a document still retained by the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London. Pierre Fauchard’s writings as a surgeon-dentist forecast the need for specialists in this field. Another French dentist, LeMonnier, performed and recorded the first successful repair of a cleft palate, in 1764. Ii-He used cautery and horsehair sutures. John Hunter’s writings from the eighteenth century provide a picture of oral disease and dental transplants at that time.

AMERICAN BEGINNINGS THROUGH THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In the United States, a few nineteenth-century physicians recognized a need for concentrated training in the care of oral diseases. When these physicians were not accepted as specialists within the profession of medicine, two of them--Chapin A. Harris and Horace Hayden-founded the Bal- timore College of Dental Surgery in 1840 (now part of the University of Maryland). Harvard Dental School became the first to attain full uni- versity status, in 1867. The first school of den- tistry at a state university was established in Michigan in I 875. The rise of the dental profes- sion fostered the rise of the first pioneers in dental specialties.

Simon P. Hullihen (1810-1857)

The first individual recognized as an oral surgeon was Simon P. Hullihen of Wheeling, West Vir- ginia. He obtained a medical degree at Washing- ton Medical College of Baltimore. In 1843, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery awarded him a D.D.S. degree as honorary recognition.

In his short career, Dr. Hullihen performed an amazing number and variety of oral surgery pro- cedures, in addition to designing special instru- ments and writing extensively on oral diseases and their surgical correction. Included among the afflictions he treated and described were infec- tions, jaw fractures, cleft lips and cleft palates, and trigeminal neuralgia. His surgical descrip- tions reflect an empathy and compassion that might have arisen from his own affliction, a burn deformity of his foot and leg. A mandibular os- tectomy to correct an open bite, credited as the first orthognathic surgery, was performed by Dr. Hullihen in 1849 on a young woman with a se- vere facial burn disfigurement.

The first public hospital in Wheeling, char- tered in 1850, was founded by Dr. Hulhhen. After his death in 1857, rhe citizens of that city honored his memory with a monument, which still may be seen in Wood Hill Cemetery there. Edward C. Armbrecht, a Wheeling oral surgeon whose biographic research on Dr. I-Iullihen was presented to the AAOMS archives, established

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