C. Edmund Kells

rdf:langString C. Edmund Kells

rdf:langString C. Edmund Kells

rdf:langString C. Edmund Kells

rdf:langString New Orleans

rdf:langString Dentist

rdf:langString Clarence Edmund Kells Jr. (1856–1928) was an American dentist and inventor who is sometimes described as "the father of dental radiography". He practiced dentistry in New Orleans for 50 years and held about 30 patents for dental and electrical devices. He introduced a suction apparatus for use by both dentists and surgeons, took some of the earliest X-rays of the teeth of live patients, hired the first female dental assistant, and had one of the first dental offices with electricity. A graduate of the New York College of Dentistry, Kells joined his father's dental practice in 1878, and they worked together until his father died in 1896. In 1908, Kells moved his office to the Maison Blanche building. He wrote two books on dentistry and contributed three chapters to a popular dental textbook. He finished the manuscript for a third book on the conservation of teeth, but it was never published. Kells was an outspoken critic of focal infection theory, the widely held belief that mass dental extraction would stop tooth infections from causing problems in other parts of the body. Some influential physicians supported the theory, but Kells believed it was causing dentists to perform countless unnecessary extractions. By 1919, he was warning dentists that they should refuse to extract teeth at the request of physicians. For about the last 20 years of his life, Kells suffered from skin cancer related to radiation exposure, and he had about 30 surgeries on his fingers, hands and arms. By the late 1920s, most of his left arm had been amputated, and the cancer was spreading up his right arm. In chronic pain, losing his eyesight, and worried about becoming dependent on others, Kells fatally shot himself in 1928.