Shirley is one of my favorite patients, but she is never on time!

The other day she had a 4:30 pm appointment scheduled. At 4:40 pm she called and asked if I was running on time (I was). But, she didn’t arrive until 5:00!

“Shirley, is everything alright?” I asked as she was whisked into the treatment room.

“I was at the post office buying stamps.” she said. “Now Shirley,” I said, “today is April 15th, tax day. It’s perhaps the single busiest day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service. Just out of curiosity, what time did you get to the post office?”

“4:15,” she replied.

As I sighed, she confessed, “ I have an issue with time management.”

Ya think????

Inspired by the arrival of President’s Day and my recent foray into online pontification (somehow the term blogging just doesn’t do it for me), I feel compelled to reveal the truth behind the myth that George Washington had wooden teeth. Though he was plagued by toothaches all of his adult life and was known to have been treated by some of the most prominent dentists in Colonial America, George Washington never had wooden teeth. While he most certainly had “false teeth” (i.e. dentures), they were made from materials such as porcelain, gold, hippopotamus tusk, elephant ivory and even human teeth, but never wood.

By the time General Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States, he had but one tooth left in his mouth (a lower left bicuspid for those of you who are dentally curious.)  In addition to his nearly constant battle with tooth pain, the ravages of dental disease also physically marred the father of our country.  In some of his well-recognized portraits, a scar can be seen on his left cheek, which is believed to have been caused by an abscessed tooth.  When he sat for his presidential portrait in 1796, the artist Gilbert Stuart used cotton to plump out his lips and cheeks because his facial features were so sunken.

And finally what might be the first documented case of cosmetic dentistry, President Washington complained to his dentist that his teeth were discolored. Dr. John Greenwood, advised him that when drinking port-wine…”to take them (his dentures) out after drinks and put them in clear water and put in another set, or clean them with a brush and some chalk finely scraped.”

So, on this President’s Day, as we celebrate and remember the contributions of President George Washington (and of course Abraham Lincoln), let’s remember that while little George could not tell a lie when he cut down that cherry tree, he didn’t brush his teeth before going to bed.

Reference:  Dentistry An Illustrated History by Malvin Ring, DDS