Akers Harry F, Foley Michael A, Brown John P, Woodford Valerie
Metro North Oral Health Services and University of Queensland Oral Health Centre.
Professor Emeritus, Dental School University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
J Hist Dent. 2019 Spring/Summer;67(1):40-56.
Charles Octavius Vidgen was the Superintendent of the Brisbane Dental Hospital, c1917-1945. Hitherto, commentators' reviews rely on imposing but narrow streams of evidence to either ignore Vidgen's influence on the dental profession or portray it as both peripheral and controversial. In this account, the authors use historical method to provide a revisionist account of Vidgen's professional profile and, to a lesser extent, a character resurrection. Vidgen was probably introverted. His orientation relating to dental education became obsolete, inappropriate and disruptive. Vidgen's actions, beliefs and values incurred sustained and organized opposition from academe, the Australian Dental Association Queensland Branch, the Odontological Society of Queensland and some private practitioners. The sociopolitical context, namely the Great Depression and affiliated reconstruction, the community's demand for government-administered dental services, World War II, twenty-five years of continuous Australian Labor Party government in Queensland, Edward Hanlon's authoritarianism and the emergence of a welfare state were also relevant to Vidgen's becoming a nonconformist, nonjoiner and an outcast. However, the authors posit that, for the socially disadvantaged and the regionally and remotely domiciled, Vidgen was a humanitarian and a quiet social reformer who, under Hanlon's authority and tutelage, pioneered enduring changes to the delivery of dental services across Queensland.
查尔斯·奥克塔维厄斯·维德根在1917年至1945年期间担任布里斯班牙科医院院长。在此之前，评论者的评价依赖于有限但权威的证据来源，要么忽视维德根对牙科行业的影响，要么将其描述为处于边缘且具有争议性。在本文中，作者运用历史研究方法，对维德根的职业形象进行了修正主义的描述，并在一定程度上重塑了他的人物形象。维德根可能性格内向。他在牙科教育方面的理念变得过时、不恰当且具有破坏性。维德根的行为、信仰和价值观遭到了学术界、澳大利亚牙科协会昆士兰分会、昆士兰牙科学会以及一些私人执业者的持续且有组织的反对。社会政治背景，即大萧条及相关重建、社区对政府管理的牙科服务的需求、第二次世界大战、昆士兰连续25年由澳大利亚工党执政、爱德华·汉隆的独裁统治以及福利国家的出现，也与维德根成为一个不墨守成规、不随波逐流且被排斥的人有关。然而，作者认为，对于社会弱势群体以及居住在偏远地区的人来说，维德根是一位人道主义者和默默的社会改革者，他在汉隆的权威和指导下，率先对昆士兰各地的牙科服务提供方式进行了持久的变革。
