Was the Destiny of Orthodontics Written in the Stars?
This fanciful tale describes an 1882 meeting in London between a young American dentist and two highly acclaimed English scientists. Although fictional, the story is historically accurate, and the ideas expressed are authentic. One participant in this colloquy is Edward H. Angle. He was a 27-year-old farm boy from rural Pennsylvania whose formal higher education consisted of two years at a proprietary dental college in Philadelphia, from which he graduated at age 23. The other participants are 73-year-old naturalist Charles Darwin and his cousin, 60-year-old Francis Galton, an anthropologist and statistician. Darwin and Galton grew up in highly educated and wealthy families and graduated from the University of Cambridge.