Orthodontics in 3 millennia. Chapter 7: Facial analysis before the advent of the cephalometer

The cephalometer was not invented in a vacuum. It was the culmination of centuries of efforts on the part of artists, anthropologists, and scientists to fathom nature’s vicissitudes. Whereas Renaissance investigators “caged” the human face in a series of grids in an effort to find proportional relations, 20th-century orthodontists were more interested in knowing how the teeth and jaws related to the face and cranial base. Primarily a research tool, the cephalometer became a means of unmasking a patient’s whole developmental pattern, becoming our most important diagnostic tool since study models.