Dental Dilemma

Someday, perhaps, medical science will equip us all with permanent false teeth that can be installed at birth and that will last throughout our lives, remaining as shiny and sturdy as ever. When that day arrives the Colgate people will have to leave chlorophyll to the plants, and the dentist, perhaps the least enjoyed appendage of modern civilization, will at last go the way of the alchemist.

But the great toothless millennium is not here yet, and all over the world little children are still having their nerves drilled out every six months, and are still biting their dentist's fingers in return. At Harvard, specifically, downtrodden College students are still faced with the problem of the third floor of the Hygiene Building.

Novocain, drills, and fillings being what they are, the Dental Clinic is never a very pleasant place to spend one's time. For the student who is driven there by a toothache or some other dental crisis, however, the Clinic can become downright infuriating. For no matter how painful his ailment, he is usually told to come back in two or three weeks when the doctors will be able to give him an appointment.

Of course the student does not just suffer for this whole period. He either pulls the tooth out himself (thereby perhaps landing in the Infirmary instead of the Dental Clinic), or goes to one of the local private dentists whom the Clinic obligingly recommends. Here he pays considerably more than the specially-reduced $3 fee to which he is entitled at the Clinic.

Certainly the Hygiene Department cannot be blamed for this trying situation. Its present Holyoke Street building simply cannot hold enough dentists to serve the University's need, and it is quite natural that students should have to make appointments weeks ahead of time. This problem, like various others confronting the Department, can be solved only by the erection of a new Hygiene Building and the simultaneous expansion of all undergraduate health facilities.

But the new building is at least five years away, and meanwhile the student with a toothache is still down in the mouth, as it were. A steady stream of people who want their teeth cleaned or checked prevent him from getting an appointment when he needs one. As a provisional solution, the Dental Clinic might leave some time open each day for only the more serious cases, and if necessary, might refer to outside dentists some of the students with routine problems. This solution would not be so satisfactory as universal false teeth, but it might prevent some unnecessary gnashing and gnawing in the local area.