At best, we can say that Washington had a poacher’s smile. His dentists took chunks of ivory from hippopotamuses, walruses, and elephants, sculpted them down, and affixed them to dentures using brass screws. They filled in any gaps with teeth from less exotic animals, such as cows and horses, or—when the Madeira stains weren’t too bad—from Washington himself. But he didn’t always have to look quite so far afield. At the age of eleven, he inherited ten slaves from his father, and over the next fifty-six years, he would sometimes rely on them to supply replacement teeth. He paid his slaves for
...more
