The first meeting of the Australian section had seven papers. Peter and I gave one, and others were given by Tony [Storey] and Bryan Radden and a Japanese gentleman gave an address.[69] The organisation was already going in the US and enough people felt that an Australian section would be a good idea.

Peter Reade: The IADR has an international Journal of Dental Research which was influential [in promoting academic interchange]

Henry Atkinson: Pushing the clock back further, there was a Dental Materials Group, Victorian chapter, of the IADR, which still exists.[70] That was the start of the IADR business and we were discussing getting recognition of a formal association at the time. We’ve got the minutes of that group in 1953-54, when Edward Marks was Chairman, then Ted Campbell,[71] who was the third Chairman.

Peter Reade: It provided a pressure to be respectable in the dental scientific exercise, and to participate in meetings. It was quite a pressure. It might not have been for the best reasons at times. If you didn’t give a paper, you weren’t financially supported.

Henry Atkinson: You didn’t get help with travel, and the Department had difficulty attracting funds.

Peter Reade: There was a lot of kudos in giving papers. I think that was a major pressure for developing research in the Dental Schools throughout Australia.

Hector Orams: There is a published history of the IADR in Australia.[72]

Owen Crombie: Summaries of the papers given at IADR meetings cropped up in various places. As students it was always very exciting to see the names of Dr Harcourt, Professor Reade or others, and to think you had met these people.

Ann Westmore: I presume the development of this sort of professional group within dentistry bolstered the status of dentists in academic and research positions.

Gerry Dalitz: Talking of status, I’d like to ask when we adopted the courtesy title, Doctor.

Henry Atkinson: It was discussed by a Ministerial Advisory Committee in the 1970s. There was no legal objection raised to it and then it was accepted by the Dental Board of Victoria. And then it spread.

John Harcourt: It was formalised in the new Dental Act of 1972, I think

Gerry Dalitz: Some background may help here. Australians who went to America and did their DDS degree lorded it over the locals and called themselves doctor. So it started with a collusion of people in the profession who did it. Anybody could adopt the title as long as they didn’t practise medicine. Then of course all the chiropractors got on the band-wagon.

John Harcourt: I think there was a prohibition in the Medical Act (part 2) which governed dentistry until it was superseded by the 1972 Act. It was probably more honoured in the breech.

Gerry Dalitz: But the basis of the prohibition was whether you were actually professing to practise medicine.

John Harcourt: That’s true.

John Hales: I worked with Hartley Gibson[73] for nearly 20 years. He was a member of the Dental Board and President of the ADA before that. There was always a horror of opening the Act because what would happen was unpredictable.

Witness to the History of Australian Medicine