The article analyzes how the separation of the teaching of medicine and of dentistry occurred in Brazil. It highlights the role that the institutionalization of dental teaching policies played in shaping a professional identity. Relations are drawn between teaching policies and professional practices to show how their relationships and meanings have changed historically. It is argued that the teaching of dentistry became autonomous because of the need to comply with the formation of a system to regulate healing practices in Brazil and that the process of its institutionalization transpired under the inspiration of positivist policies about free teaching. Curricular practices produced the subjectivity of the modern dental surgeon and his clinical practices.