[The fight over dentistry 1919-1924].

In the history of many professions there are periods of more or less pronounced borderline fights against other professions and/or charlatans. This article is about such an example from the profession of dentistry in Sweden. From the middle of the second decade of this century, there was an increasing discrepancy between the need for dental care and the too low number of dentists. Furthermore: the majority of the Swedish people could not afford dental care at all. In the public debate the concept "dental misery" was created. In 1919 a famous Swedish paediatric professor, Isak Jundell, presented a debate article in "Allmänna Svenska Läkartidningen" (Journal of the Swedish Medical Association), with a proposal for building up a corps of dental assistants with shorter training than dentists, but still with competence for tooth cleaning, extraction and some operative dentistry. The aim of the proposal was to give people easier available and cheaper dental care. The dental profession had been questioned and threatened and the reaction from the advocates of the dentists was immediate and intense. Now followed an almost five year long struggle, with the Swedish Dental Association on one side and parts of the medical profession, dental technicians, even some dentists and a number of politicians on the other. The controversy ended up in the Swedish Parliament in 1924 where many members in both the chambers had signed motions concerning authorisation of dental technicians. The dentists won the fight thanks to the resolution in the Parliament not to authorise the technicians. But still more important, from a social political point of view, was a statement from the Parliament with a commission to the Government to analyse the prerequisites for building up a Public Dental Health Service organisation in Sweden. After a series of committees this was finally a reality fourteen years later, in 1938, when the Parliament in a resolution initiated "folktandvården".