Which foreign leaders are "toothless"?

The firm image of the first president, Washington (1732- 1799), was built on a pair of uncomfortable dentures.

American scholar Jeffrey? Schwartz analyzed the spectrum of Washington dentures and found that dentures are made of lead and gold. The upper teeth mainly come from the upper teeth of horses or donkeys, while the lower teeth mainly come from the upper teeth of other people's mouths.

This denture is not practical. The surface of the lead bracket is flat and cannot cover the gums; The spring that connects the upper and lower trays and presses them against the gums bends backward-normal conversation will cause dentures to squirt out.

Its purpose may be just to maintain personal image on important occasions, or it may be to meet basic daily communication. In the basic function of teeth: you can still chew something soft, but forget to eat meat.

It looks terrible in workmanship and materials, but it is the best one Washington has-by his last full-time dentist, John? Greenwood's "mature" dentures.

The best dentures in Washington

Washington's teeth have always been very bad, because he often pries open the walnut shell with his teeth and enjoys his favorite walnut kernel. Since the first tooth was pulled out at the age of 24, seven full-time dentists have pulled out all his teeth. 1789, when Washington was president, he only had a left lower premolar in his mouth, but it was also that year that he pulled it out.

Long-term tooth loss will make the bone supporting the root absorbed, leading to the collapse of the jaw and drastic changes in size and shape. When I finally wanted to wear false teeth, I didn't have enough jaws to support it.

In the past ten years in Washington, John? Greenwood made some false teeth for him. The original "technical verification" dentures were riveted on the carved hippopotamus teeth with gold rivets. He drilled a big hole in it so that the only tooth left in Washington at that time could pass through it. ...

1798 65438+February 12, Washington wrote to Greenwood and asked the dentist to correct it with a file. "Otherwise, you will push your lips under your nose up."

Hippopotamus dentures in Washington. The inscription on the tray reads: "This is the tooth of the great Washington", and the dentist "J? Green forest ".

Washington relies heavily on dentists. Greenwood asked Washington to pay $5 more for his orthodontics work, which was equivalent to two months' salary of a corporal in the US Army at that time. Dentistry is never cheap, and materials such as ivory, gold and hippopotamus are by no means available to the poor.

Rinse your mouth with urine twice a day.

As far as the level of oral medical service is concerned, the founding father of the United States was born at an inopportune time. In 700 BC, artisans in Truglia made false teeth by fixing human or animal teeth with gold thread. But until the Washington period, there was no major breakthrough in denture technology. Tooth extraction technology, oral hygiene and how to keep beautiful were the main directions of stomatology at that time.

In 700 BC, the fixed denture technology in northern Italy fixed the denture on the adjacent teeth, which was only suitable for a few cases of missing teeth. In the eyes of future generations, dental pioneers made many mistakes in the main direction of attack.

In pursuit of whitening, Egyptian pharaohs like to boil porridge with talcum powder and wine vinegar and grind their teeth on a small stick. After the decline of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, dentists who were also barbers polished their teeth with a file and coated them with a corrosive liquid containing nitric acid. All these techniques are destroying the enamel protective layer on the tooth surface.

Roman ladies invented a slightly healthier method: gargling with human urine-yes, they believed it would whiten teeth.

In the18th century, this method was rediscovered and quickly became popular in Europe. Pierre, known as the father of modern dentistry? Fu Chang (1678- 176 1) once wrote a dental outline of more than 900 pages. He claimed that many people whose teeth are about to rot "relieve great pain" by making them rinse their mouths twice a day-using the urine they just excreted.

Fu Cha wrote: "Although the taste may be unpleasant, its curative effect is very obvious." Because urine contains natural ammonia, explained by modern science, this method is much more scientific than the previous whitening skills and witchcraft to relieve toothache.

Many heads of state with the best resources, such as Washington, live in the pre-modern era. In contrast, Washington, which lived before the industrial revolution, was lucky.

The study of Egyptian pharaohs' mummies shows that almost all pharaohs suffer from dental diseases. This is a disease of wealth. Only Pharaoh can eat bread made of stone mill flour. Unfortunately, flour contains a lot of sand and pebbles, which will wear away the enamel of teeth. Pain followed, but the earliest Egyptian dentist in the world was only responsible for tooth extraction, and would not install false teeth for Pharaoh. Egyptian religion believes that people should not interfere with the human body when they are alive.

Before the rise of modern science, dentists everywhere agreed that the pain and injury of teeth were caused by "worms" in gums. This theory means that it is useless to change dentures.

King Louis XIV of France (1638- 17 15) had a very serious dental disease. There is a big hole in the left mandibular recess, partly because he is too rich and has too many sweets. After the geographical discovery, due to the mass production and trade circulation of slave plantations in the West Indies, the price of sugar was greatly reduced, and edible sugar also fell from the banquet of nobles to the rice bowls of the poor. Tooth decay has crossed the class, which has brought a strong demand for dental care.

However, the upper class can use a slightly decent treatment-dentist Dubois inserted a thick, long, hard and hot metal rod into King Sun's mouth and cauterized him 14 times.

At the age of 45, Queen Elizabeth could not sleep for several days because of toothache, and finally agreed to have her tooth extracted. After losing her molars, her face sagged inward, and she had to put gauze in her mouth to keep her image on important occasions.

Henry III, the Earl of Anjou who pursued Elizabeth and later became the French king, also lost his teeth. He once stuffed a false tooth like an animal bone into his gums and tied it to the teeth on both sides with thread-the early technology was so crude that only very rich people could afford it. Precious metal teeth and ivory are just ordinary materials. 1735, Lord Hervey made dentures with Italian agate, leading the trend.

/kloc-At the beginning of the 8th century, Fauchard, a Parisian dentist, pioneered the technique of fixing upper and lower dentures with copper wire springs. At this point, the prototype of modern dentures appeared. Washington's dentures are the product of this removable denture technology.

Of course, this technology has high requirements for springs, and the risk of instability always exists. At the meeting of European Socialist Party in June 5438+February 2006, British Deputy Prime Minister John? Prescott threw up all his dentures during his speech. In addition to saying "my teeth" in a panic, the vice minister paused and didn't know how to straighten it.

It is precisely because of the lack of strength of early dentures that until the Victorian era, if the upper class wearing dentures held a banquet, they had to take off their dentures in the bedroom and eat secretly to prevent embarrassment on formal occasions.

The problem does not stop there. Dentures made of ivory or animal bones have no enamel layer and are very perishable, which not only means that they need to be replaced constantly, but also often get infected and bring extremely serious bad breath. Washington's dentures are black. It is said that they taste great and need to be soaked in wine to relieve them.

177 1 year, anatomist John? Hunter published the book "Natural History of Human Teeth", sorting out the material categories of dentures at that time. Include shells, ivory, bones or dead teeth. This picture is part of the illustration.

There are two kinds of dentures, which can avoid serious tooth decay to some extent. First, ceramic dentures appeared at the end of18th century. Alexis, a British dentist, invented the technology of making ceramic dentures with different colors and shapes, as well as single or whole dentures.

Although ceramics are durable and convenient to fix, they are easily broken; Moreover, due to the lack of supporting dental cleaning tools, people's teeth are mottled with black and yellow, and porcelain dentures are dazzling white.

The other is a real human tooth. They often have disgusting origins.

Grave robbery, Waterloo and Les Miserables

Needless to say, people's teeth have advantages in color and strength, but when they leave the original gums, they will become inactive and need to be replaced regularly. This not only means the huge demand for human teeth, but also allows denture dealers to meet many dignitaries. The upper class who need to change their dentures regularly are stable customers.

People who make false teeth are generally limited to four front teeth: the front teeth are of good quality and easy to pull out-no matter from the mouth of the dead or the mouth of the living, there was no anesthetic at that time. A pair of false teeth will consume about 16 to 20 front teeth, which means that four or five people can supply a noble master. People's teeth are therefore in short supply.

The downstream demand led to the emergence of the profession of tooth hunters in the upstream, who collected teeth from all possible places.

The teeth of the poor are an important source and expensive. 178 1 year, a pair of dentures on Gillard Street in London costs half a guinea (a guinea is a little higher than a pound), and the price of a tooth is four times.

A row of teeth with poor quality is marked with a high price of 3 1 pound 10 shilling-about the sum of a farmer's three-year income. The income of the poor from selling teeth can be turned over for a period of time. Fantine in Les Miserables is an even more unfortunate example, that is, she sold her teeth and body.

Fantine's tooth was pulled out in the stills of Les Miserables.

The works of Thomas Rowlandson, an English illustrator from 65438 to 0787, depict a typical poor man selling his teeth. The chimney worker with a dark body on the middle sofa is about to have his teeth pulled out, and the lady in yellow on the left is about to have a transplant.

Dentures only need to be replaced regularly, and single tooth transplantation is very dangerous. Rejection, bacterial infection and other issues were completely unknown at that time. Dental source providers do not do health examination and do not do preoperative disinfection. The long-term success rate of this operation is extremely low, and dental historians once thought that this operation could spread syphilis better than solving the patient's oral problems.

Toothhunters also extract teeth from unknown bodies. The source of the body is either the execution ground or the grave robbery.

Astrid. Cooper was a famous surgeon in London in the early19th century. He bought bodies from a group of grave robbers, and his nephew wrote astoria? The secretary of Cooper's life story said: "The income from selling teeth alone is enough to offset the risks and troubles of stealing corpses and digging graves."

But the number of teeth obtained by these "conventional means" is still too small. Zhenya gold mine is on the battlefield. Only when a large number of young and healthy soldiers are killed can teeth be continuously supplied. Astrid. Cooper's life story quoted a tooth hunter as saying: "As long as you fight, you are not afraid of losing your teeth;" As long as someone falls, I'll knock out my teeth at once. "I can pull out my teeth as quickly as I can knock them out."

On the night of June 18 18, 2005, after 23 years of war, the French army was defeated in Waterloo, with 50,000 casualties on the battlefield. The tooth hunter reveled. Under the protection of night, they skillfully opened the mouth of the deceased and pulled out countless front teeth with powerful pliers.

Many teeth are shipped abroad in barrels. Among them is John, a dentist in Washington? Greenwood used oak barrels for wine as containers and returned to the United States with a bucket full of human teeth-Washington could get cheaper teeth as long as it lived for a few more years. The same unfortunate person is Fantine in Les Miserables. She sold her teeth around 1823 and met a bear market with too many teeth. If it had been ten years earlier, it might have sold for a good price.

How many teeth are there? There is a proper term "Waterloo Tooth" in English, which refers to the teeth of a whole generation of European and American soldiers killed in battle.

The most widely circulated photo of Waterloo's teeth.

These teeth have also entered popular culture. The minority rock band Schnauser released an album called "Where Business and Fashion Meet", and the ninth song was "The Teeth of Waterloo". ?

Schnauser's album cover

/kloc-the west in the 0/9th century has never been calm. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War broke out between Britain, France and Russia. The American Civil War put the all-out war into practice for the first time. Due to the huge number of deaths, the teeth were returned to Europe.

Dentures save the world

Since the middle of19th century, most dental innovations have originated in America.

Dentists have known for a long time that if the denture tray can completely fit the mouth and there is no air between them, the suction will firmly fix the denture, so there is no need for a spring. However, the bottleneck that materials and technology cannot break through has been solved by Americans.

1844, American hardware businessman and inventor Charlie? Goodyear announced a new type of vulcanized rubber. Not only can it be applied to tires quickly, but it can also be cast into a comfortable denture base with low price. Goodyear made a fortune with this patent and was murdered for money. In order to commemorate him, a tire company was named after him, which translated into Chinese as "Goodyear" of Xindaya and became a century-old shop in the industry.

However, in order to be extremely thin, the upper class is still reluctant to use slightly thicker rubber dentures. Churchill is an example.

Churchill's famous lisp came from false teeth. After puberty, he suffered from dental problems. In his twenties, his front teeth fell out and he missed his speech. But under the political system, speaking skills are so important to politicians. According to a spokesman for the museum that later collected Churchill's dentures, "Churchill has been worried about losing his language ability since he became an adult."

The solution is to match false teeth. Churchill's original dentures were made of hard rubber and were very uncomfortable to wear. Several pairs of dentures ignored the user experience so much that Churchill kept prying open the dentures in his mouth and slamming them against the wall.

After Churchill became Prime Minister of the wartime coalition government, he found wilfred, the most famous dentist in Britain at that time. Fisher. Fisher carefully designed the model for him and made several pairs of dentures with gold alloy trays based on it. Churchill was very satisfied with this.

"All I can offer is blood, toil, tears and sweat ..." Churchill made many speeches to boost the morale of British soldiers and civilians during the war, all thanks to this pair of dentures. Narcissistic British people call it "denture to save the world".

From 1952 to 1954, Churchill wrote to thank Dr. Fisher many times at the end of his second term, and even proposed that he be knighted. He once wrote: "I am very honored to recommend you to be awarded this well-deserved honor." I attach a pair of false teeth. I would appreciate it if you could tighten it a little bit. The other couples have been working very well. "

20 1 1 year 1 month 19, that is, three years ago today, Churchill's gold-inlaid dentures were successfully auctioned in Norfolk, England at the price of 15200 pounds (about 160880 RMB at that time).

Fortunately, we live in 2 1 century. Dental treatment is still not cheap, but it is much easier to have charming white teeth than before.