What were George Washington's artificial teeth made of? Detailed answer

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What were George Washington's artificial teeth made of? Detailed answer

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What were George Washington's artificial teeth made of?

Mostly hippopotamus.

Washington constantly toiled with his teeth. According to John Adams, he lost them because he loved to gnaw on American nuts, although modern historians believe that the mercuric oxide, which Washington took as a cure for various diseases like malaria and smallpox, was most likely to blame.

Washington lost his first tooth at the age of twenty-two, and by the time he took office, he had only one tooth left in his mouth. On a special presidential order, several sets of false teeth were made, four of them by a dentist named John Greenwood.

Contrary to common misconception, none of George Washington's false teeth were made of wood. For example, those made when he became president were carved from elephant tusk and hippo tusk and held together with gold springs. The tusk of a hippopotamus was used for a plate into which real human teeth were inserted, as well as specially molded pieces of horse and donkey teeth.

Due to problems with his teeth, Washington constantly experienced discomfort and was forced to drink an infusion of opium. This excruciating malaise is clearly visible in the presidential portraits of those years - including the one that is still used on dollar bills.

It is believed that the awkwardness in the facial expression of a man with a mouth full of hippo teeth was deliberately exaggerated by the portrait painter Gilbert Stuart, who did not get along with the president.

Until the invention of modern synthetic materials, the most popular artificial tooth was the tooth of another person, but getting them was not so easy. In addition, these teeth often fell out, especially if they were rotten or if the previous owner had syphilis.

Dead (but otherwise healthy) young people were considered the best source of "decent" artificial teeth, and the battlefield was considered the most suitable place to get them.

One of these fields was Waterloo, where 50 thousand people died at once, and their torn teeth went in bulk to the prosthesis market. For many years, such dentures were called nothing more than "Waterloo teeth", even when they came from completely different sources.

Real human teeth were used in dentures until the 1860s, especially in abundance during the Civil War.

Artificial teeth came to us at the end of the XNUMXth century. One of the first materials for this purpose was tested celluloid - however, without apparent success.

Celluloid teeth reeked strongly of ping-pong balls and melted if a person drank hot tea.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

What is the web made of?

Spiders live in all climatic zones, depending on the species, both in the air and on the water, on the ground and in the soil. Their sizes range from 8 cm to barely visible. Some species can do without water for a whole year, and one subspecies - a large tarantula - feeds on birds and lives for about 15 years. However, most species live only one year. But the most important thing is that spiders are not insects. They belong to a group called "arachnids". They differ from insects in that they have 8 legs instead of the usual six, 8 eyes, and only two body parts.

The fiber that spiders use for their webs is produced by special abdominal glands. The gossamer extends from many tiny depressions on the weaving organs located at the tip of the abdomen. It appears in the form of a liquid, which solidifies immediately in air.

There are several varieties of fibers: sticky, strong, necessary for catching prey, supporting crossbars, to which they do not stick, and for cocoons in which eggs are laid. Some of them are soft and fluffy, others are hard and hard.

Spiders can weave all these types of webs. The wheel-shaped web is used only for catching prey. First, a "foundation" is created - the lower external heavy threads, in the form of an irregular quadrangle. Next, the spokes of the wheel are constructed, supporting 3-4 turns of the helix. Last of all, sticky spirals densely filling the empty space appear.

Another type of web is called a leaf web. These are flat funnel-shaped or dome-shaped surfaces of the fibers. The spider lives on the other side.

The spider makes a "hatch" in the form of a bottle-shaped hole. It is on top. This makes the burrow comfortable, disguising it as branches and soil. Wolf spiders build a tunnel in the ground and connect it to fibers.

European water spiders build bell-shaped houses right under the water. The spider fills it with air, bringing it from the surface with abdominal hairs. Here he lays his eggs and raises the babies until they can build their own home. By the way, not all spiders spin webs. Some only build a one-room house in a leaf and a piece of bark.

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