George R. Moore

Open-bite with obtuse mandibular angle and relatively short rami, materially improved by exstraction

among other relatives, exhibit this same obtt~sity of mandibular angle with faces which are very much out of proportion when the nasion-subnasion measurement is compared with the subnasion-mentun measurement; and yet among the four mentioned who possess this obtuse angle and long face, the patient is the only one with an open-bite. The father does not have a deep overbite, but all his teeth are in occlusion.

Orthodontic treatment methods employed by the writer

H AVING started in the practice of orthodontics at a time when considerable change in attitude toward the treatment of orthodontic casts was in progress, I am! like many other men who have come into the field within the last ten years, dominated by this new method of approach to the whole problem of orthodontics. I think that an examination of all of the appliances I have used in the past eight years of practice would exhibit very effectively the application of these new principles insofar as it has been possible technically for me to adhere to them. I refer to the conviction among leaders in our profession that our problem is principally a problem of development. A large percentage of the cases me treat, which offer any obstacle t,o improvement, are themselves merely symptomatic of defective growth and development generally. Viewing the problem in this light, by far the majority of appliances used in my practice have been designed, from the very start, with t,he hope of stimulating development rather than straightening teeth. My first instruction in this line of thought came during a year of postgraduate instruction under Dr. A. LeRoy Johnson at the University of Michigan. Under his guidance I first learned to understand t,he true place of appliances in any practice-as a means to an end and not the end in itself. Possessing this attitude, naturally I have been influenced more by the writings of such men as Hellman, Hatfield, Oliver, Mershon, Howard, Ketcham, Lourie, and others, concerning appliances, than by those writers who for years have been concerned with t,he more intricate so-called vjse-like appliances. It is my belief that appliances should fulfill the following requirements: simplicity of design, stability of anchorage, inconspicuousness, cleanliness, and, except in a few cases, a property which permits development of the supporting structures to progress without interference in any direction except in the direction of application of necessary stress. As an example of t,he last point, let us consider hypothetically t,he effect of stimulating development in the maxillary lateral incisor region where we observe the lateral occluding lingually to the mandibular teeth. To treat this condition by using a band on the lateral incisor and any form of rigid attachment of this band to a body wire, either lingually or labially, would, in a measure, inhibit normal activity of osseous development of this region. Coming under appliances which might thus inhibit, one might mention the high labial wire when used with band and vertical tube, on the lateral; the iow labial wire when used wh the Angle ribbon