I was researching into some information and stumbled across an older article about how scientists have analyzed and scanned George Washington’s dentures to identify their make up and composition. Contrary to popular belief his dentures were not made out of wood, he had no wooden teeth even though that is a common story that even that I had heard. He actually had four sets of dentures and one of those was fashioned out of Hippopotamus ivory. The other sets were fashioned out of gold, lead and human and animal teeth which also was a sign of the times. Lead was commonly used for purposes that caused illness and disease due to people not realizing the toxicity of the metal. The dentures themselves were held together with bolts and had springs in them to help them open and close. Kind of archaic devices, It’s not like it is nowadays where he could have gone to have a professional Washington DC teeth whitening. You were stuck in the times with either rotting and lost teeth or having to use dentures. Fluoride was not invented yet, so they did brush teeth with bristles and a variety of pastes and water, but this did not protect and strengthen teeth but only helped clean the surface debris off of teeth.

Other things I learned about George Washington is that he was the most active and physically fit of all the founding presidents of the United States, he was also a dancer and a horseman. There has been much research into the last few years into piecing together more of the life of the founder of our country as those didn’t want him to be portrayed as just this stoic solemn face on the Dollar Bill. One other thing I didn’t know is that by marrying into wealth George Washington had become the richest man in Virginia at the time and arguably the richest man out of the 13 colonies. It is widely held that he did not die of the common cold but of a Tonsil infection that spread into pneumonia which ended his life.

-Dragon Blogger

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