From the Richmond Examiner, 8/27/1864, p. 2, c. 1

DENTAL ATTENTION FOR THE SOLDIERS.

Within the past two months an arrangement has been made by the Surgeon-General of the Confederate States and the Medical Director of the State of Virginia, which must conduce to the health and comfort of our soldiers. Two skilful dentists, men of ability in their profession and of the highest integrity of character, have been detailed from the army to attend gratuitously in the line of their profession certain of the most extensive hospitals in this city and its vicinity. One of these gentlemen attends Chimborazo, Seabrooks’, Howard’s Grove, and the General (alms house) Hospitals; the other the Jackson and the Winder Hospitals. The amount of work done by them in each of these institutions every week is immense, comprehending, as it does, every branch of the profession except the manufacture of artificial teeth. Besides extracting and filling teeth, operations of the first consequence to the patient, in many cases they are called upon to construct plates and appliances for the setting of fractured jaw bones. We learn that the soldiers are extremely grateful to the Government for bestowing upon them this species of attention. Many of them have had their teeth filled and their mouths otherwise put in complete order, who, for months and years past, have been kept away from the dentist solely by reason of the expense, which they were unable to meet.

We hope that the wisdom and humanity of this arrangement will so command it to the authorities, that steps will be taken to put the services of a skilled dentist within the reach of every soldier in our armies.

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