[mankyd]

There is some history here, at least in the US.

As I recall, when "modern medicine" was first forming, there was a push to make it part of what we would consider standard medical care, but another, more influential party decided (incorrectly) that teeth weren't living tissue and should be excluded.

The divide took hold and we ended up with the system we have today, where teeth are independent of the rest of the medical field. It's especially noticeable when you have dentists, orthodontists, and oral surgeons, each separate specialties referring between each other, but only oral surgeons falling under medical insurance.

[MBCook]

You’re right, there’s a history.

The reason I remember (I don’t know which of us or both are right) is that modern doctors came out of the “medical”/healing specialty where as dentists came out of the barber/surgeon tradition.

So I believe doctors didn’t want to admit their inferiors (barbers who pull teeth) to the profession and so that’s why dentists were kept out.

Overtime they’ve both grown in parallel since they end up covering a lot of the same things. X-rays, infections, medications + dosages. but dentist still get different training than “real“ doctors.

It does seem like dentistry should probably be a specialty of a normal doctor program at this point, but it’s not for some kind of historical reason as you mentioned.

[mankyd]

I did a bit more digging and think I might have gotten the story a tiny bit muddled, but maybe not?

Most the articles I find talk about the barber vs doctor distinction, but they also all bring up a story about a proposal to add dentistry to the University of Maryland's medical school.

Evidently this proposal was put before the state legislature, was rejected, and thus was born the Baltimore College of Dentistry. From their own website:

> With the founding of the college, dentistry became a profession separate from medicine. Dentistry could have become a medical specialty if the Maryland legislature had approved a request to incorporate it as a department at the University of Maryland’s medical school, but the request was rejected owing to cost. Dentistry then set its own course.

https://www.mchoralhealth.org/milestones/1840.html

From what I can see, people seem to point to this story as a historical waypoint for the division of the two in the US.

[MBCook]

Interesting. Thanks for following up.

Very weird to think it was a decision by a legislature that set that path going forward.

I guess I had just assumed it was some kind of professional medical association that decided it.