BIZARRE FACTS ABOUT DENTISTRY
Dentures used to be made from dead people’s teeth.
George Washington never smiled because he had terrible dentures made at first from wood and later from human and elk teeth. They were so painful, he hardly ate at presidential dinners and would slip away to privately gum pickled tripe.
Denture-makers had a field day after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 when the casualties included tens of thousands of young men with unusually healthy teeth for corpses of that era. As recently as the late 1970s, 30% of people in this country over the age of 18 had no natural teeth. If a front tooth had to go, you had all of your top or bottom teeth pulled out and replaced by dentures to avoid an unsightly gap.