Bainbridge, Ohio: Where American Dentistry Was Invented

In a small building in Bainbridge, Ohio, a dentist named John Harris established what is considered the first dental school in the United States in the middle eighteen twenties. Harris had no formal training himself, but he systematized what he knew and taught apprentices out of his home office, creating a model that eventually led to the founding of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in eighteen forty, the first degree-granting dental school in the world. Chapin Harris, John's brother, was one of the co-founders of that Baltimore institution and is considered the father of American dentistry as a profession.

The building in Bainbridge is now the Harris Dental Museum, a small but specific landmark in the story of how dentistry moved from itinerant tooth pullers to licensed practitioners. Bainbridge itself is a Ross County village of fewer than eight hundred people.