After an excellent dinner at a restaurant in Paris, a provincial visitor was unable to pay the bill on discovery that his pocket book had disappeared. He explained his position to the proprietor but the latter, who was recently swindled by an individual who told the same story, refused to take any excuse for non-payment. In order to avoid a scandal, the visitor was obliged to leave his gold-mounted artificial teeth as a guarantee that he would return and pay for his meal.
High altitude flying reveals dental troubles that elude even the X-ray. Naval doctors found for instance, a naval dive-bomber pilot reported that he was always troubled with severe toothache just before going into a dive. He blamed sinus trouble. But a test in a pressure chamber simulating the atmospheric conditions at high altitude revealed hidden decay that had not been detected by X-rays. Studying an undisclosed number of cases, navy doctors found:
(1) Fifty-seven per cent, of airmen developed toothache in a pressure chamber equivalent to a height’ of 28,000 feet.
(2) Twenty-three per cent, experienced pain at a reading equivalent to 18,000 feet.
(3) Twenty per cent, began showing symptoms before reaching the equivalent of 10,000 feet.
After the hidden decay had been located and repairs carried out, the airmen experienced no further discomfort.
President Hoover went to the Walter Reed Military Hospital in Washington for dental treatment, and it was found necessary to extract three or four of his teeth. An orderly who was in attendance had the bright idea that there were people who would be willing to pay good money for a President’s teeth, so he gathered them up as soon as Mr. Hoover had left. He not only possessed himself of the Hoover teeth, he also collected all the teeth that had been extracted that day from the jaws of many sufferers by the hospital dentists. The exact number of his collection is not stated, but it was considerable and he had no difficulty in disposing of them all as genuine Hoover teeth at 50 cents. This price he found afterwards was absurdly low, for within a day or two he discovered that they were being sold in the city at several dollars each. Then somebody discovered that there were more teeth on offer than the Hoover household could have supplied, even if every member had visited the dentist and had every tooth extracted. Quotations in the Presidential old teeth market immediately dropped to zero.
A clergyman who had taken temporary duty for a friend, had the ill-luck to injure his false teeth during the week. The plate was sent to the dentist’s for repair, a faithful assurance being given that it should be duly returned by Sunday’s post, but the dentist or the post proved faithless. With the assistance of the clerk, the clergyman managed to stumble through the prayers, but felt it would be useless to attempt to preach. He therefore instructed the clerk to “ make some excuse for him and dismiss the congregation.” But his feelings may he better imagined than described when in the seclusion of the vestry he overheard the clerk in impressive tones thus deliver the “excuse”: very sorry, but it is his misfortune to be obligated to wear a set of artful teeth. They busted last Wednesday, and he ain’t got them back from London today as he was promised. I’ve helped him all I could through the service, but I can’t do no more for him ; ’tisn’t any use him going up into the pulpit, for you wouldn’t understand a word he said, so he thinks you all may as well go
home.”
Source: The Bendigo Independent, Sat 22 October, 1892
The Sultan of Turkey, it is said, once suffered much from toothache, and the dentist having inspected the royal patient’s teeth declared that one of them must be drawn. In order to give the Sultan nerve, a slave was brought to his apartment and had a tooth extracted. The slave, however, bore the operation so very badly that it had just the opposite effect to that which was intended, and the Sultan, thinking the remedy worse than the disease, declined to submit himself to the forceps. A little later on the faulty tooth again became troublesome, and again the Sultan sent for the dentist, who reiterated his former opinion that the offending tooth must come out. So a second slave was summoned and underwent torture. He yelled louder than the first and for a second time Abdul Hamid declined to be relieved through such an ordeal. The attacks of toothache continued to occur, yet when eight slaves had been operated upon, the Sultan had not gathered up sufficient courage.
The latest idea in economy stands to the credit of a thrifty American woman who lived near Janesville, and was wearing her dead husband’s false teeth. When he died she had his fine set of false teeth removed before he was placed in the coffin. Then she called upon the old dentist, informing him that she desired to have them remade to fit her, and the request was granted. When she left the dentist, she said that she hoped that the teeth would make her feel 30 years younger, as she intended to marry again shortly.
Source: Clarence and Richmond Examiner, Sat 27 July 1907
Nicholas, a poor peasant who worked in the fields of Macedonia had but one ambition; to some day have a gold tooth. His natural teeth were all sound enough, and as white and even as anyone could wish, but the longing for one of the shining yellow metal held him fast. So when Nicholas said goodbye to his Macedonian sweetheart, Kyra, a beautiful peasant girl, and went to New York, he promised that he would return to claim her as his bride after he had got a gold tooth. The immigrant settled in the States, worked hard and amassed a small fortune. One day a dentist placed a shining gold crown on one of his teeth, and Nicholas left immediately for Macedonia to marry Kyra.
An extraordinary and untimely accident caused a suburban wedding to be postponed for two hours. The prospective bridegroom was having his last meal as a bachelor when he had the misfortune to break his false teeth in halves. What might have been merely an unfortunate nuisance was made serious by the fact that he swallowed them. He was rushedto hospital, where an x-ray examination revealed that the broken denture was lodged in his stomach. In spite of the misfortune he was determined that the ceremony should take place, and the marriage was performed.
America’s Skylab astronauts were trained in pulling teeth and stitching wounds to avoid the possibility of having their flights cut short by health problems.
The special training was aimed at setting space endurance records.
The most ingenious prisoner of war in Stalag XXA (Germany) was an Australian, Lance-Corporal A- Lewis, who made himself a set of false teeth with melted down “silver paper”. This was revealed by a British prisoner’s letter published in the “Daily Mail,” which stated: “Lewis, by common consent, gets all the silver paper from the cigarette packets and chocolates received in prisoners’ parcels. He melts it down, and by pouring it in moulds supplies the men with first-class reproductions of regimental badges.”
