Founding Father George Washington

[Cindy]

[citizen]

Originally Posted by aegsm76

The first sentence was an attention grabber. Please read the entire article for a better picture.
Also, the below was taken from some different websites.

It puts a different spin on the entire story.

"In the 1780s, a French dentist tried unsuccessfully to transplant teeth into Washington’s mouth, and some evidence exists that several enterprising slaves at Mount Vernon sold their teeth for this experiment."

"Unlike most of the Founding Fathers who owned slaves, Washington freed his slaves in his last will and testament and set aside funds to help them begin a new life. He wrote on several occasions that he was opposed to slavery, noting that "there is not a man living who wishes more than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it."

Slaves of the eighteenth century sometimes turned to the perfectly acceptable means of making money by selling their teeth to dentists. Since at least the end of the Middle Ages, poor people had often sold their teeth for use in both dentures and in tooth-transplant operations for those wealthy enough to afford the procedures. Sometimes the teeth were perfectly healthy; others were diseased and needed to be pulled anyway. In 1780 a French dentist named Jean Pierre Le Moyer (also called Le Mayeaur, Le Mayeur, and Joseph Lemaire) came to America, possibly as a naval surgeon with the French forces commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau, and over the next decade treated patients in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Alexandria, and Richmond. He seems to have had an extensive practice in tooth transplants, but the results of the procedure were short-lived, usually less than one or two years. Transplantable teeth were hard to come by, and in 1783 Le Moyer even went so far as to advertise in the New York papers for "persons disposed to sell their front teeth, or any of them," netting the donor two guineas (forty-two shillings) per tooth.

The following year, in May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed "Negroes," presumably Mount Vernon slaves, 122 shillings for nine teeth, slightly less than one-third the going rate advertised in the papers, "on acct. of the French Dentis [sic} Doctr. Lemay [sic]," almost certainly Le Moyer. Over the next four years, the dentist was a frequent and apparently favorite guest on the plantation. Whether the Mount Vernon slaves sold their teeth to the dentist for any patient who needed them or specifically for George Washington is unknown, although Washington's payment suggests that they were for his own use. Washington probably underwent the transplant procedure--"I confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion," he told Richard Varick, his friend and wartime clerk, in 1784--and thus it may well be that some of the human teeth implanted to improve his appearance, or used to manufacture his dentures, came from his own slaves

I dont know what website you got that article on slaves' teeth being used for free persons dentures or implants but I do have to say - it places a much more pleasant spin on it than the one I read. I was really creeped out about the whole thing before.

I wonder how many teeth it would have taken to buy their freedom.
And like Coadie said - they didnt need all 32 teeth.

[citizen]

Originally Posted by pelathais

That opening statement was unnecessarily inflammatory. Thanks for the additional info.

I myself was skeptical about the claim of "implanting" teeth into humans in the 18th Century. I guess it would take a Frenchman to try. Can you imagine the procedure? Ouch!

And then, it only last a year, two at the most. I'd rather have a "slave" chew my food for me, but even then, fasting would be almost continuous. yecch!

"Martha! Get another jar of apple sauce out, will ya! And mash these 'taters more finely!"

Washington died after being famously "bled." He arrived home, cold and wet, ate dinner in his wet clothes and went to bed. He woke up with a nasty fever and Martha called a doctor. Before the doctor could even get there, Washington had someone "bleed" him to "treat" the fever.

When the doctor arrived he bled Washington right away himself. A bit later Washington was bled again because the first bleedings failed to cure the fever for some reason. He died of "unknown causes" later that morning. Tobias Lear's eyewitness account of Washington's death is republished here.

I never said I hated President Washington.
Now the slaves may have - since he waited until he was about to die before freeing them, but I found the article about taking the teeth of slaves for his own body to be astounding.

[coadie]

Originally Posted by citizen

I dont know what website you got that article on slaves' teeth being used for free persons dentures or implants but I do have to say - it places a much more pleasant spin on it than the one I read. I was really creeped out about the whole thing before.

I wonder how many teeth it would have taken to buy their freedom.
And like Coadie said - they didnt need all 32 teeth.

When I wuz a kid, some of us visited Mexico and our parents visited a dentist Dentures for 12 bucks saved some hard earned money. The Mexican dentures didn't do a bit of good with Spanish words. The Mexican teeth still worked on our German words.