Born in Newburgh, Ontario, Canada, on September 6, 1870, Price graduated from the dental college of the University of Michigan in 1893 and began to practice in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

His research, based on case reports and animal studies performed on rabbits, claimed to show dramatic improvements after the extraction of teeth with non-vital pulps.

Price's research fit into a wider body of testimonials in the dental literature of the 1920s, which contributed to the widespread acceptance of the practice of extracting, rather than endodontically treating, infected teeth.

[18] Three years after Price died in Santa Monica, California, a special review issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association confirmed the shift of standard of care from extraction back to endodontical dentistry.

[19] Compared to modern research, Price's studies lacked proper control groups, used excessive doses of bacteria, and had bacterial contamination during teeth extraction, leading to experimental biases.

[23] The 1939 foreword to the book, written by physical anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton, lauded Price's work for confirming previous research that dental caries were less prevalent in "savages" and attempting to establish the etiology for this difference.

In 1940, a review in the Canadian Medical Association Journal called the book "a masterpiece of research", comparing Price's impact on nutrition to that of Ivan Pavlov in digestion.

[23] Likewise, a review in the Journal of the American Medical Association disagreed with the significance of this nutritional research, noting Price was "observant but not wholly unbiased", and that his approach was "evangelistic rather than scientific.

The review makes the assertion that Price had a preconceived positive notion about the health of primitive people, which led to data of questionable value and conclusions that ignored important problems known to afflict their societies, such as periodontal disease.

The review states that Price's work has been well discussed and has not been covered up, and notes that although Price's theories were later supplanted by subsequent research that found endodontic treatment is safe and effective, his focus on the biology of teeth and infection is still relevant in modern dentistry, as some clinicians have placed more emphasis on technology and poorly tested procedures for the treatment of infected teeth.

The Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation (PPNF), a non-profit organization established in 1952, with a membership of 28 dentists as of 2008, maintains an archive of Price's manuscripts and photographs and espouses principles of holistic medicine.

Barrett asserted that dental problems experienced by native peoples resulted from "abuse" of sweet, fatty, and salty food; exposure to new germs; inactivity; and alcoholism, and described Price's studies on bacterial leakage from root canals as "poorly designed".