Did George Washington have wooden teeth? No. It was much weirder.
There is a very common myth that George Washington had wooden teeth. Now he DID have dentures but they weren’t made of wood. He had a few sets made of various things… tin, gold, lead, and ivory from hippos and elephants. However, the one set that is still intact and you can go visit are made of ivory and human teeth from cadavers! As gross as it sounds this was actually very normal at the time. (PS If you want to see these dentures go to the museum at Mount Vernon in VA!)
Where does one get teeth from people to make dentures? A few different places actually…if you were poor and in need of money you could get your teeth pulled and sell them, grave robbers would steal teeth from corpses to sell, and a lot of teeth came from battlefields. A specific example is the battle of Waterloo where thousands of troops died. Surviving soldiers, looters and locals would go to the battlefield with pliers and pull teeth out of the deceased. Those teeth would be sold to dentists who would boil them, file them down and shape them into what they could insert into ivory bases. Apparently molars were too hard to pull so those were mostly just carved out of ivory. And then rich people would put them in their mouths gross. Eventually porcelain replaced teeth followed by vulcanite (rubber based).
Want to read more about old timey dentures? Check out this site… https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33085031
More info on George Washingtons teeth…
https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/wooden-teeth-myth
