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A Dentist and a Gentleman: Gender and the Rise of Dentistry in Ontario, by Tracey L. Adams. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. 235 pp. $45.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-8020-4826-9.
Tracey Adams examines the rise of the dental profession in Ontario, Canada from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s. She describes how men entering dentistry set out to structure and define the profession so that it reflected a respectable lifestyle, social status, and economic prosperity. These men desired not only to establish their middle-class status, but they also desired to "establish their manhood." That is, dentists wanted to become middle-class, professional gentlemen. Adams relies on dental journals, minutes of dental board meetings, and other related association meetings to explore the significance of gender to the establishment of the dental profession as revealed through dentists' own words and imagery.
From the subtitle Gender and the Rise of Dentistry in Ontario, it is likely assumed that gender will be a prominent theme in this book. It is, but perhaps not in the way one might expect. Adams begins by asking "Why study dentistry?" One of her answers is that women have never been formally excluded from dentistry,...