Pierre Fauchard (1678-1761) is known as the father of dentistry. This division of medicine participated fully in the enlightenment. After a second reading of his book, The Dental Surgeon, an examination of recent publications of 18th century practitioners, and the discovery of new documents, we have gained a better understanding of the man, the dental surgeon, and the place of scientists in his century.

No one before Pierre Fauchard had claimed to be able to move teeth except Celsus who suggested applying finger pressure to a tooth that was erupting in the wrong direction.

Fauchard advised dentists to examine a patient’s mouth and occlusion first and then, if necessary, to use one of a number of methods he proposed to “straighten” irregular teeth. The principal device was a “plate,” a small segment of thin metal attached to anchor teeth from which force could be exerted on mal-positioned teeth. He uprighted teeth leaning inward by luxation with a “pelican.”

The two chapters of his book that were devoted to “straightening” teeth constitute the origin of modern orthodontics.

It is generally agreed that cephalometric analyses of the Americans Ricketts, Steiner, and Tweed are of questionable utility. The C.R.A.N.I.O.M group has formulated a new method of using cephalometric measurements that it believeswill be moderately helpful to orthodontists in making their diagnoses. We analyzed 83 young adults in Class I occlusion who had had no orthodontic treatment.

The most interesting new formulation of our plan was to examine the extremes of the variables that we considered in this population. These figures constituted limits that differed widely fromeach other: there wasmore than a 30° gap between the measurement of the incisor inclined furthest buccally and the one inclined most lingually (or palatally).

Accordingly, for these lower anterior teeth inclinations to Downs’s mandibular plane ranging from 78 to 114° were acceptable. And for the maxillary incisors inclinations to the Frankfort plane varying from 97.5 to 130.1° are considered to be in a standard range. The need to reposition incisors in order to conform towhat we can now see as an abusively rigid normal accordingly occurs much less frequently.

For this reason, orthodontists will find far fewer indications for the extraction of bicuspid teeth than they would in rigidly adhering to the standards imposed by the Ricketts, Steiner, and Tweed cephalometric analyses. We believe that measurements of skeletal, osseous structures merely differentiate between various typologies and do not describe forms that constitute anomalies.

The C.R.A.N.I.O.M group affirms that cephalometrics occupies a position in the array of orthodontic diagnostic tools that comes after the assessment of esthetic, periodontal status, and muscular equilibrium.

Dr. Olivier REVOL, a pediatric psychiatrist, is the chief of the Neuropsychiatric Service at Pierre-Wertheimer Neurological Hospital of Lyon. In practice for more than twenty years, Dr. Revol has been the director of a reference center for learning disorders for the last seven years. He has written two books14,15 and many articles devoted to precocious intelligence, hyperactivity, and problems young people have adjusting to school for national and international publications. In his service, Dr. Revol gives hope to many children and their parents every day and fights tirelessly to insure that all students, no matter what level of competence they may have, discover the pleasure of learning in school.

Last June, at the invitation of the Association of the Revue d’O.D.F, Dr. Revol presented a captivating all day conference on the topic, “Adolescence, are we making it a disease?” whose proceedings the Revue d’ODF published in full16.

Miniscrews are the most important recent innovation in orthodontics and have won a place, we believe, in the routine appliance design of everyday orthodontic practice. They are, we think primarily applicable in the treatment of the most prominent feature of the malocclusions orthodontists regularly confront, an antero-posterior discrepancy. Accordingly we discuss the protocol for full banded and bonded Class II mechanotherapy with miniscrew anchorage for:

     • Global arch or anterior sectional displacement;

     • Direct or indirect mechanics;

     • Sliding or loop mechanics.

We then demonstrate clinical procedures: placement of miniscrews, static and mobile sectors, strengthening sectorial anchorage, active forces, and space management.

Next we analyze the mechanics of treating complex cases with vertical as well as antero-posterior problems.

Throughout the article we illustrate the text with sketches and clinical records.