In 1900, British surgeon William Hunter blamed many disease cases on "oral sepsis". In 1910, lecturing in Montreal at McGill University, he claimed, "The worst cases of anemia, gastritis, colitis, obscure fevers, nervous disturbances of all kinds from mental depression to actual lesions of the cord, chronic rheumatic infections, kidney diseases are those which owe their origin to or are gravely complicated by the oral sepsis produced by these gold traps of sepsis." He apparently indicted dental restorations. Incriminating their execution, rather, his American critics lobbied for stricter dental licensing requirements. Still, Hunter's lecture—as later recalled—"ignited the fires of focal infection". Ten years later, he proudly accepted that credit. And yet, read carefully, his lecture asserts a sole cause of the sepsis: dentists who instruct patients to "never remove" partial dentures.