Printed wraps, 8vo, (531)-594pp. VG- with chipping to bottom front corners, 2" paper residue to cover, and tidemark to the upper corner throughout, not affecting text. With snippets from Scientific American, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, British Journal of Dental Science. Pages 579-594 all ads, many illustrated, representing T. B. Welch's products (mostly filling materials) and other suppliers/manufacturers including Fleet & Co. and Delaware operations Wilmington Dental Manufacturing Co. and L. D. Caulk (among others). Not in OCLC.

Editorial segments: "Full, Yet Empty," "Busy, Yet Accomplishing Nothing," "Dignity," "Phonetics," "Anti-Natal Influences," "What is the Outlook?" "Cash Payments," and, "Neutralizing Syrup."

Combines dental industry content with more general health articles and niche interests, like insisting phonetic spelling is not a "utopian scheme" (572). The varied content is reflective of its editor Thomas Bramwell Welch, a dentist and Methodist minister best known as the founder of "Welch's Grape Juice," the result of discovering how to keep grape juice from fermenting in pursuit of making a temperance-friendly communion.

One of several dental trade journals being published in Philadelphia, a a major hub for dentistry in the late nineteenth century. By 1885, it was home to 3 dental schools: Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery (est 1856), Philadelphia Dental College (est. 1863), and the University of Pennsylvania Department of Dentistry (1878). Gopsill's Philadelphia City Directory lists 17 “Dental Materials and Instruments" businesses,including Welch and Sibley, and over 350 dentists in the 1887 issue, the closest year available for reference.

Ref.: Penn School of Dental Medicine. 'Dental School Library Historical Collection' finding aid; Gopsill's Philadelphia City Directory, 1887, 178-180.