An Orthodontic Book Review Principles of Orthodontics : By J. A. Salzmann, D.D.S., Lecturer on Preventive

Orthodontics at the Murry and Leonie Guggenheim Dental Clinic, Ssso- ciate Editor of the American Journal of Orthodontics and Oral Surgery, Editor of the New York Journal of Dentistry, and author of “Principles and Practice of Public Hea.lth Dentistry,” Price $10.00, Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1943.

Something new and different has emerged from the press in the way of an orthodontic textbook. In this book there is obviously a serious attempt to cover the comprehensive field of orthodontics in an abridged text, and, at the same time, there is plainly an effort to refrain from keying the book to any particular mechanical appliance. The various mechanical devices presented are described on their individual merits. They are presented in a comprehensive manner, and it is plain that the sponsor or originator of each particular device or idea de- scribed in the text has been asked to edit the text before the book went to press, thus making for a fair presentation of the subject in hand.

It is explained in the acknowledgment of the textbook that the principles on which orthodontics is based are made up of fundamental contribut.ions of many workers in various fields. The book claims to correlate “the various currents and crosscurrents which have been set in motion by the persistent ac- cumulation of information in order that the uninitiated may have a point of embarkation for exploration of the ever-expanding knowledge of the subject.”

The author goes deeper into the background of orthodontic practice than is the rule in other texts, and opens the first paragraph with the observation, cred- ited to Hooten, that malocclusion is one of the manifestations of the decline in the human dentition; he then presents chapters at length on the subjects of ortho- dontics, prophylactic orthodontics, history of the subject, complete discussion of growth and development, bone growth and the carpal index development and growth of the head, developmental anatomy and physiology of the face. De- velopment of the dentition anomalies of tooth eruption and formation, occlu- sion, endocrines, nutrition, etiology, and many other subjects that are not usu- ally discussed in orthodontic textbooks are included.

An attempt is apparently made to add caste to the appliance department by giving it the ostensibly more dignified name of mechanotherapy. Much less space is devoted to details in this book on Principles of Orthodontics, however, than in text books which deal primarily with “systems” of treatment.

The reader quickly senses the fact that the author is among those who be- lieve that the time has arrived when the serious student of orthodontics of the future must study the background of the entire subject more assiduously, and that he must regard the appliance department as one of the corrective inci- dents in the problem, and not the whole problem, in the correction of mal- occlusion of the teeth.

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The book is an excellent orthodontic digest of current thought on the sub- ject. Some of the chapters are highly important, more than others. However, the current thought is all there for the reader to accept or reject as he sees fit to do.

The volume merits careful and serious study by the student and prac- tioner of orthodontics; and, for the general practitioner, its careful reading will add much to his perspective of the growth and development of the dental architecture of man.

The book should be added to the library of every up-to-date dentist, for his information, for there is much between its covers that he did not learn in dental school.

H. C. P.