Dr. John Miller Hyson Jr., a retired dentist and former director of archives and history at the National Museum of Dentistry at the University of Maryland Dental School and an author who wrote widely on the history of dentistry, died Saturday of a stroke at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care.
The longtime Timonium resident was 81.
Dr. Hyson, the son of a dentist and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on Ellerslie Avenue.
After graduating from Loyola High School in 1945, he attended Loyola College for a year before transferring to the University of Maryland Dental School, from which he graduated in 1950.
He served as a dental officer in the Air Force at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida from 1950 to 1953 and was discharged with the rank of captain.
He earned a master's degree in oral surgery from the University of Maryland Dental School in 1959, and a master's degree in museum studies in 1999 from the University of Delaware.
In 1953, he established a general dental practice in Idlewylde, and later moved in 1976 to the Osler Medical Center near St. Joseph Medical Center, where he continued practicing until retiring in 1999.
Dr. Hyson had been a member of the visiting dental staff at Maryland General Hospital and what is now the University of Maryland Medical Center.
He also had been an instructor in oral surgery and operative dentistry at the University of Maryland Dental School during the 1950s.
In addition to enjoying practicing dentistry, Dr. Hyson was fascinated by the history of his profession. He became a prodigious contributor to the Journal of the History of Dentistry, Military Medicine, and the Bulletin of the History of Dentistry.
His articles covered such topics as the history of the toothbrush, women dentists, George Washington's dental health and his wooden dentures, African-American contract dental surgeons in the Spanish American War, Dr. James Baxter Bean and the establishment of first military maxillofacial hospital and the founding of the West Point Dental Service.
His 1994 article in Bulletin of the History of Dentistry asked, Did You Know A Dentist Embalmed President Lincoln? His original research led to a story titled "William Saunders: The United States Army's First Dentist-West Point's Forgotten Man" that was published by Military Medicine in 1984.
