George Washington’s Dentures: Disability, Deception, and the Republican Body

George Washington’s dentures are well-known but understudied. This article examines the first president’s extant dentures along with medical texts, satirical prints, portraits, novels and elocution manuals that circulated around the Atlantic to argue that by concealing his tooth loss Washington’s dentures enabled him to perform republican virtue. Inserting Washington’s false teeth into early Americans’ larger cultural interest in deception, made evident in trompe l’oeil painting, reveals the ways that these new citizens accepted some amount of dissimilation in their republic in the name of politeness. Finally, considering the fact that Washington paid slaves for teeth that were then likely used in his dentures, the article examines his prostheses from the perspective of both the presidential wearer and the men and women he enslaved.