I'm interested in why medicine and dentistry (and, to some extent, podiatry) seem to be considered so distinct. Why is there a difference in medical education (medical school and M.D./D.O. vs. dental school and D.D.S.)? Did early physicians practice both medicine and dentistry? If there was a split where the two practices became distinct, at what point did it occur? How does the development of current specialties that lie at the intersection of what we consider medicine and dentistry, such as oral surgery, fit into this division?
I understand similar questions have been posted to this subreddit in the past, but I am interested in hearing some new ideas on the subject.
Dentistry originated from the barbershop interestingly (as did surgery). You see dentistry and surgery split from each other in Middle Ages France.
> A Guild of Barbers is established in France. Barbers eventually evolve into two groups: surgeons who were educated and trained to perform complex surgical operations; and lay barbers, or barber-surgeons, who performed more routine hygienic services including shaving, bleeding and tooth extraction.
By the 1400s lay barbers were prohibited from those complex surgical operations and surgery became recognized as its own profession.
> A series of royal decrees in France prohibit lay barbers from practicing all surgical procedures except bleeding, cupping, leeching, and extracting teeth.
And there is some overlap between medicine and dentistry. I suppose it would depend on the procedure whether you'd go to an ENT (ear, nose throat) surgeon which is MD, or oral surgeon which googling seems to suggest is program dependent whether MD, DMD, or dual MD/DMD.
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Also, DO originated as medicine with a different philosophy. The original osteopath, AT Still fittingly believed that diseases originated from the bone (three of his children died from spinal meningitis). Osteopathic medicine therefore maintains a focus on treatment through mechanical manipulation of the bones.