AMBLER, HENRY LOVEJOY (10 Sept. 1843-14 June 1924) earned distinction as a practitioner, teacher, and historian of dentistry. Born in Medina, he received a M.S. from Hillsdale College in Michigan before graduating from the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati and gaining the M.D. from Cleveland's Western College of Homeopathic Medicine in 1868. He began lecturing on oral surgery at the latter school while establishing a dental practice in Cleveland. He moved to New Hampshire in 1886 but returned 6 years later to become Professor of Operative Dentistry at the Dental College of Western Reserve University (see CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY). Ambler served as dean of the dental school from 1893-1906, a period marked by deteriorating relations with the university's medical school, possibly due to Ambler's background in homeopathy. During his tenure the dental school moved into separate quarters from the medical school and saw its students closed out of the latter's science courses and labs. Ambler resigned at the time that the dental school was sold to a private operator. More successful as a dental innovator, Ambler invented several dental instruments and wrote a book on Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth (1897). A global trip resulted in another book, Around the World in Dentistry (1910). Noted for his scholarship, Ambler produced a History of Dentistry in Cleveland, Ohio (1911) and served for 21 years as Critic of the Cleveland Dental Society, becoming the arbiter on the pronunciation of terms and historical facts. Following the death of his first wife, Annie Jenness Ambler, he married Juliet A. Ambler. Ambler was buried in LAKE VIEW CEMETERY.
Henry Lovejoy Ambler Papers, Dittrick Museum of Medical History.