Tweed believed that extracting teeth lead to a more harmonious profile than what Angle achieved in his practice and was the best technique to prevent orthodontic relapse.
According to Proffit et al.,[1] under the leadership of Charles Tweed, extraction of teeth was reintroduced into orthodontics in the 1940s and 1950s to enhance facial esthetics and occlusal relationships.
However, Tweed's "serial extraction" technique met with opposition from some colleagues, such as the world-renowned Dr. B. F. Dewel, later president of the American Association of Orthodontics, who termed the procedure a "mutilation" of the facial structure and critiqued Tweed's idiosyncratic ideal of beauty: a recessed face was hardly more attractive than a "full smile", he claimed.
[2] The "extraction versus non-extraction debate" became and remains the most controversial issue in the orthodontic industry, and grew especially heated after the Brimm lawsuit of 1986, in which a young Michigan woman won 1.3 million dollars from her orthodontist due to what the jury termed "mutilation" of her facial structure.
Tweed published his first article in the Angle Orthodontist journal, titled "Reports of Cases Treated with the Edgewise Arch Mechanism".
Tweed during his discussions on a particular Orthodontic subject was famous for this saying "Just put your plaster on the table" which meant Let the Treatment Speak For Itself.
During his early years, Tweed found that large number of his cases experienced failures either due to relapse of the corrected dentition or poor facial esthetics.
Tweed believed in keeping the mandibular incisors uprighted over the basal bone and thus he would expand the arches buccally.
[4] The tides turned once more, however, in the 1990s, notably after the 1986 Brimm lawsuit, in which Tweed's approach was proven to lead to serious jaw disorder and the rate of extractions halved in the United States.