🏺 Recovered from the dusty archives
George Washington Dentures: Not Wood, but Ivory and Springs
- What: George Washington’s dentures were not wooden; they were custom-built from materials like hippopotamus ivory, human teeth, and metal components with springs.
- Where: Late 18th-century America.
- When: Washington’s adult life, especially by the time he became president in 1789.
The famous image is simple: George Washington with wooden teeth. The reality in late 18th-century America was stranger and more revealing. Washington did wear dentures, but they were not made of wood. They were built from materials like hippopotamus ivory, human teeth, and metal parts, assembled with the kind of careful engineering early dentistry required.
What Washington’s Dentures Were Made Of
Start with the object itself. Several sets of Washington’s dentures survive, and they look more mechanical than natural. Ivory was carved to form the base. Real human teeth were fitted into place. Metal fasteners and springs helped the upper and lower plates open and close. Dentures of the era sometimes used animal teeth. The result was less a single false smile than a compact device designed to function inside a painful, unstable mouth.
George Washington’s Dental Problems
Washington had severe dental problems for much of his adult life. By the time he became president in 1789, he had only one natural tooth left. His letters and records mention toothaches, extractions, payments to dentists, and constant discomfort. His dentist, John Greenwood of New York, crafted several sets of dentures for him. These were custom pieces, adjusted and repaired over time, not crude props.
The 18th-Century Tooth Trade
The human teeth in such dentures came from a world with few good options. In the 1700s, dentists could buy teeth from poor people willing to sell them, and records show Washington paid for teeth at least once for dental use. There is no definitive proof that teeth from enslaved people ended up in the specific dentures we know today, though that claim is often repeated. What is certain is that the broader dental trade of the era depended on unequal and often brutal systems.
That is what the wooden-teeth myth hides. “Wood” makes the story quaint. The truth is less charming and more informative. Washington’s dentures show a period when medicine was improvising with ivory, metal, and whatever biological materials could be obtained. They also show why portraits of him often depict a tight, strained expression: the dentures were bulky, they altered his face, and they were difficult to wear.
The hard fact is that George Washington’s dentures were not wooden. They were hand-built dental appliances made from hippopotamus ivory, human teeth, metal components, and springs—evidence of both the ingenuity and the harsh realities of 18th-century dentistry.
Did You Know?
John Greenwood, Washington’s dentist, treated the first U.S. president.
