The orthopaedist is so called from the Greek roots orthos, straight or correct, and paidos, child. The orthopaedist, by etymology, straightens children. The term was coined in 1741 by the author of a textbook on the prevention of childhood diseases – at that time the correction of spinal curvature in children was a main concern of practitioners of orthopaedics.
Today the speciality treats deformities, injuries, and diseases of the bones and joints (of adults as well as children, of course), often by surgical procedures.
Orthodontics, the straightening of teeth, is built on orthos plus odontos, tooth. The orthodontist specializes in improving your ‘bite’, retracting ‘buck teeth’, and by means of braces and other techniques seeing to it that every molar, incisor, bicuspid, etc. is exactly where it belongs in your mouth.
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