FLUORIDATION of community water supplies is one of the truly important developments in the field of preventive dentistry. Current discussion of this measure brings to mind another preventive health technic, — inoculation against smallpox, introduced in the American colonies 231 years ago.1 Inoculation made quite a stir. It was a success from the beginning, but it created so much excitement and opposition that those who submitted to it were considered a public menace. One of its ardent supporters, Cotton Mather, turned his home into a secret inoculation center. Even as late as 1774, a hospital here in Salem was burned . . .