President Abraham Lincoln and his Smile (or lack of)
Having grown up in Springfield, Illinois, and the area around it, I am no stranger to all things Abraham Lincoln. Just walking distance from my childhood home lived a kind, older gentleman named “Mr. Brunk” who my friends and I loved to visit. He would share stories his parents would tell him about how Lincoln would stop and stay in the bed upstairs on his trips to and from Springfield. He would take us up to the room and let us lay “right where Lincoln slept”. It was thrilling to imagine and truly made Abraham Lincoln more real to me. The home was built in 1829 and had been in the Brunk family until it sadly burnt down a few years ago. Every school year, it was a field trip to Lincoln’s home, Lincoln’s New Salem, The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, and of course the poignant and moving tour of Abraham Lincoln’s final resting place in Oak Ridge Cemetery. I was certainly influenced as a child to be curious about all things Honest Abe, and this curiosity has continued to adulthood. So, combining my fascination with the Lincolns and my occupation as a dentist, I started down the rabbit hole of the world wide web investigating. My focus: “President Lincoln’s teeth”. And what I uncovered was quite intriguing.
Before I let you “sink your teeth” into the riveting world
of Abe and his dentition, I want to give some refresher background information
to set the mood, the time, and surroundings of the world we will be immersed
in. Abraham Lincoln was born on February
12, 1809 in Hodgenville, Kentucky. His
Presidential Term lasted from March 1861- April 1865; April 15th, 1865 to be
exact, as that was when the decisive bullet not only ended his Presidential 2nd
Term but ended his life as well.
Out of the known 130 photos of our 16th president, none show
any of his teeth. (Side note: If you are
into Lincoln history and photography, 2 television programs that I have
recently watched and highly recommend on this subject are: “Living with
Lincoln” HBO and also “The Lost Lincoln” Discovery Channel). But back to the topic at hand. Lincoln never smiled, at least in
photographs. Was this because he was
ashamed of his teeth? Was he depressed?
Was smiling for photos common in those times?
This fact only made me want to search deeper to see if I could find an
answer. I moved on to Lincoln’s autopsy report in 1865 and it does not mention
Lincoln’s teeth at all. Was this
uncommon? Were his teeth simply
unremarkable? Were his teeth missing? I must continue to dive deeper.
Then eureka I started to find some clues. A brief snippet in the masses of information
stated that Abraham had gone to see a dentist some time before 1841
(possibly years before) for a toothache but did not have the tooth extracted
until 1841. This initial dental visit
may have been with a Dr. Josiah Crawford from Gentryville, Indiana. Lincoln worked as a rail splitter for him
while he was growing up in Indiana (1816-1830 from age 7-21 years old). It also mentioned that our President also
suffered from Odontophobia. Sigh, even my favorite president would apparently
quiver in fear if he were in my dental chair. Apparently when he finally went
to have the tooth extracted, it did not go well and did not help his fear. It has been reported that in 1841, at the age
of 32, while the dentist was extracting the tooth, Abraham states that his jaw
was injured as well. And little to no pain
medication was used. After this, it has
also been reported that he only went to the dentist five times in his life. He wrote about it in a letter to a friend
Mary Speed who was the wife of one of his good friends. In the letter to her he writes:
To return to the narative.
When we reached Springfield, I staid but one day when I started on this tedious
circuit where I now am. Do you remember my going to the city while I was in
Kentucky, to have a tooth extracted, and making a failure of it? Well, that
same old tooth got to paining me so much, that about a week since I had it torn
out, bringing with it a bit of the jawbone; the consequence of which is that my
mouth is now so sore that I can neither talk, nor eat. I am litterally
“subsisting on savoury remembrances”—that is, being unable to eat, I am living
upon the remembrance of the delicious dishes of peaches and cream we used to
have at your house.
In 1856 Dr. Wesley Wampler in Milton Station, Illinois, now
Humboldt, Illinois was commissioned to extract another tooth of our then local
lawyer Abraham.
Probably one of the more interesting stories occurs around
1862. Another historical side note: The
Civil War was from April 12,1861 to May 9, 1865, so in 1862 Abraham, now
President is in the thick of it. He went
to visit Dr. G.S. Wolf in Washington, D.C. to once again have a tooth
extracted. Unfortunately, fear took hold
of the President again and he asked Dr. Wolf to stop several times while the
procedures was in full force. Then the President brought out “his own bottle of
chloroform, sniffed it several times” and fell asleep. And the concept of “CYA” was evidently just
as popular then as it is now. Dr. Wolf
made it well known that the President had given him permission to extract the
tooth before he had fallen asleep. The
extraction has been documented as going very smoothly and relatively painless.
Although chloroform was relatively new to the medical field, it was noted to be
plentiful in and around the battle fields of the civil war and was freely
administered by the end of the war. It
would have been readily available for Abraham to get his hands on his own
personal stash.
A letter from J. Littlefield to W. Herndon (Herndon Law
Offices where Lincoln practiced Law in Springfield and the law offices exist to
this day!) I find it telling that
President Lincoln was able to be in such great spirits after his tooth
predicament. Maybe it was a residual
chloroform high.
“One
night of 1862, at the White House, M. Lincoln suffered from a tooth which had
been extracted. Despite the atrocious pain, he chatted with humour with, here and
there; a stroke of logic which was revealing that he had understood the situation.”
Sadly, the last documented visit President Abraham Lincoln had
with a dentist was in 1865, posthumously.
Dr. Charles De Costa Brown was an overachiever. He was an MD but found that unfulfilling, so
he went back to school and got his Dental Degree, and then he took up an
interest in embalming (which was a very new procedure at this time.) He was soon appointed an official government
embalmer during the Civil War. He also attended
to the body of the Lincoln’s son Willie who died three years before his father
from Typhoid Fever. Dr. Brown then
embalmed President Lincoln (of note: Lincoln was the first president to be
embalmed) and travelled with his body as it took the over 1600-mile journey from
Washington DC to Springfield, Illinois. It
took 19 days for President Lincoln to finally be buried on May 4th,
1865. Due to this length of time his
body had to be re-embalmed several times.
It has been said that the body was re-embalmed so many times that it was
practically mummified.
But, back to the teeth mystery. Abraham and his family grew up in Indiana and
Kentucky which are known to have high concentrations of natural fluoride in
their water holes. This would assist anyone
drinking from these water holes to have much stronger enamel on their teeth and
therefore more resistant to decay. In
addition, Abraham married his love Mary Todd in Springfield in 1842 and was
seen on 2 separate occasions buying a toothbrush. Once in 1843 and again in
1853. Perhaps this attention to oral
hygiene was due to Mary Todd’s influence.
She curiously was involved in an ad for toothpaste in the New York Times
published in 1862.
“Highly
Scented American Tooth Powder” The Following Renders comment superfluous:
Presidential Mansion
Washington, D.C. April 22, 1862
Dr. Amos Jounson, No.73 East 12th-st. New
York:
Sir: The case containing your FAR-FAMED TOOTH-POWDER has
been received, and I cheerfully testify to its superiority to all others I have
used, in thoroughly cleansing the mouth, purifying the breath, and whitening
the teeth.
Yours respectfully,
MRS. LINCOLN
Lincoln was prone to not having a large appetite and he also
did not have a high sugar diet. He was
said to not be a huge dessert lover and never smoked or drank. While I guess we may never know for sure, I
choose to believe that my favorite president, President Abraham Lincoln had strong,
healthy teeth for a man at that time.
His diet, his access to natural fluoride, his history of toothbrush
purchases, and his lack of smoking and alcohol use all would have contributed
to a healthy mouth. It makes me happy to
learn more about my hometown hero, especially in an area that is also near and
dear to my heart, Dentistry. Now tonight I think I will make some popcorn and
watch a movie that has the trifecta of my interests… Lincoln, Dentistry, and
Dracula by watching “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” a 2012 movie produced by
Tim Burton. Abe Lincoln swinging a
silver edged axe fighting vampires here I come!
Interesting read, never knew about the teeth problem with Abe. Living close to Springfield I have heard a lot of stories about Abe! What did you think of the “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” movie??
ReplyDeleteI actually really liked it! I thought that the way they tied in actual events and explained them as sequelae attributed to vampires was really cool. What did you think?????
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