I väntan på tandvård : Hur tandrötan blev politik

Sammanfattning: This thesis deals with the political history of dental caries and the evolution of professional dental care in Sweden. For centuries tooth decay was considered an unavoidable nuisance for the individual. During the decades around 1900 dental caries was gradually defmed as a social problem and a preventable national disease. Opinionshaping activities of the dentists strongly contributed to this. The mapping of tooth decayamong schoolchildren revealed a sad state of affairs in young mouths. The gap between need and dental services increased and from the middle of the 191Os tooth decay step by step established on the political agenda. In 1924 the Swedish Riksdag decided to analyze the prerequisites for a national dental service. Bad teeth were now defined as a social problem and the political process to find a solution was in motion.The Swedish Dental Society was established in 1860. The dentists were at that time mostly craftsmen with no uniform training. One of the most important closure strategies for the dawning profession was to bring about an academic education for dentists. The aim was to mark off their profession from dental technicians and quacks but also from doctors, to whom the relations frequently were strained. In this conflict the dentists were ambivalent: on one hand they wanted to be a part of the medicine on the other an autonomous profession.The dissertation aims to clarify the distinctive character of the evolution of the dental profession. This is the first thesis in Swedish in this empirical domain.