PBA Galleries

1 page + stampless address leaf.  

Inviting Providence Dentist Matthew Tyler to the Society’s Ninth Annual Meeting that year in Saratoga Springs. The Society, formed in 1840 as the first national organization of Dentists in America was soon wracked by “Amalgam Wars”, expelling members who refused to sign an oath not to use Mercury Amalgam for fillings; the controversy eventually doomed the organization, and in 1856, pro-Amalgam members formed the American Dental Association.  As ill-fated was Westcott himself, one of the first American Orthodontists, who later committed suicide after investing heavily in the “Cardiff Giant”, an alleged  “petrified man” , which turned out to be one of the greatest hoaxes of the 19th century.