Random Things Of George Washington's Teeth Weren't Wooden At All - They May Have Been Teeth of Slaves (13 items)

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  (#5) Washington Had A Close Relationship With His Dentist And Even Gave Him His Last Tooth

  Once he became president, Washington's dentist, John Greenwood, was in charge of preparing the presidential dentures. In 1791, Greenwood mailed a set of dentures from New York to Philadelphia, the current capital of the country. Washington wrote back that the dentures "were perfectly agreeable to me," and paid the dentist $20.

  These dentures included human teeth, and they were designed to accommodate the president's single remaining tooth. Greenwood explained that a dentist should "never extract a tooth... [when] there is a possibility of saving it." When Washington lost his last real tooth, he let Greenwood keep it, and the dentist saved the tooth in a special case.
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  (#12) The Patient Came Face-To-Face With The Donor

  A tooth transplant was a gruesome procedure. The donor and the recipient would visit the dentist at the same time, sitting next to each other, as shown in a 1787 caricature by Thomas Rowlandson. The image shows a dirty chimney sweep selling teeth straight from his mouth to a dentist who plans to transplant them into the mouth of a wealthy woman. 

  After checking the impoverished donor for diseases, the dentist would pull the tooth and quickly implant it into the gums of the patient, tying the donor tooth into the mouth with silk threads or seaweed. Hunter emphasized the procedure had to be fast "as delay will perpetually lessen the power upon which the union of the two parts depends."

  In Washington's case, he was most likely present when his dentist yanked nine teeth from the mouths of his slaves for the Founding Father.
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  (#2) Washington Probably Used His Slaves' Teeth For A Tooth Transplant

  Eighteenth-century wealthy people who lost a tooth had several options: they could purchase dentures to replace the tooth, or they could opt for the newer method of a tooth transplant. Washington, who only had one of his original teeth by the time he became America's first president, tried both options. 

  In May of 1784, Washington took nine teeth from several unnamed "negroes," who were most likely his own slaves. French dentist Jean Pierre Le Moyer, a specialist in tooth transplants, visited Mount Vernon several times between 1784 and 1788, and Washington's own letters hint that he underwent a tooth transplant in 1784, the same year he bought the teeth. That year, he told his former clerk Richard Varick: "I confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion." If the transplant didn't take, that might explain why Washington turned to dentures once he became president.
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  (#11) London's Poor Sold Their Teeth For Money

  When surgeons like John Hunter advertised, looking for human teeth to transplant into the mouths of wealthy Londoners, it was the poorest from London's slums who responded. Hunter recommended using young donors, and said that girls were the best because their teeth were generally smaller. He was also able to line up a row of eager donors willing to sell a tooth for a few pennies.

  Another 18th-century dentist named William Rae argued that it was immoral to take teeth from the poor to give to the rich: "In the first place, it is cruel to take the teeth of a poor creature, whose necessities may induce him to part with it as a means of procuring subsistence." He then added that poor people were often diseased, putting the wealthy at risk. 
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  (#4) Washington Owned 317 Slaves Who Lived In Misery

  Washington became a slave owner at the age of 11, when he inherited 10 slaves from his father; by the time he died, he owned 317 people.

  In 1798, a Polish poet named Julian Niemcewicz stayed at Mount Vernon for two weeks. He was horrified by the living conditions of Washington's slaves. Their living quarters could not be called houses, Niemcewicz began: "They are far more miserable than the poorest of the cottages of our peasants. The husband and his wife slept on a miserable bed, the children on the floor... a boy about 15 was lying on the floor with an attack of dreadful convulsions." The entire scene screamed of "misery" to the poet, who was shocked and appalled at the conditions he witnessed.
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  (#10) People Who Couldn't Afford Live Teeth Could Always Buy Corpse Teeth

  Buying live human teeth was expensive, but there was a cheaper alternative: corpse teeth. The main source was dead soldiers on battlefields, and after Napoleon's 1815 defeat at Waterloo, which left thousands dead, they became known as Waterloo teeth.

  A rotten tooth might be pulled and replaced with a tooth from a dead soldier. Or, more commonly, corpse teeth were used to create dentures. But as one dentist pointed out "most people have a dread of teeth which have been obtained from a corpse." So those who could afford it purchased living human teeth - like Washington.

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