Changing concepts in cariology: forty years on

Forty years on, when afar and asunder Parted are those who are reading today, When you look back, and forgetfully wonder What you were like in your work and your play, Then, it may be, there will often come o'er you, Glimpses of past and some of it wrong, Visions of studies shall float them before you, Echoes of teaching shall bear you along, What is new for the patient our hope to fulfil, Teeth unto death are chiefly our will. (With apologies to Edward Ernest Bowen and Harrow School.)

Edwina Kidd was in the staff room at the London Hospital Dental School when Ted Renson carried in his baby, Dental Update, Volume 1, Number 1. It was a revelation to see such a beautifully produced, colour illustrated and readily understandable production. The cariology article in that first number concerned the white spot lesion and was written by Leon Silverstone.1 The authors of the current paper (EK and OF) met in Leon's laboratory (a euphemism for a large cupboard) at the London Hospital at that time. One (EK) was a junior lecturer at The London whose PhD Leon was supervising; the other (OF), already a Professor of Oral Pathology in Denmark, had recently been appointed to a chair in Cariology and needed to change research focus from soft to hard tissues. He was in London to research aspects of fluorosis and work with Leon, Newell Johnson and Ron Fearnhead. Having met in a long, thin cupboard, where communication was inevitable, we subsequently worked together for 40 years (Figure 1). We now combine in this anniversary issue to take a helicopter journey over contemporary Cariology, discussing aspects of the subject as understood in 2013 and highlighting changes in understanding from the 1970s.