Page 112 - My FlipBook

82 HISTOEY OF DENTAL SURGERY

upon information given him by his Uncle Isaac. As Benjamin Franklin,
at tlie time of his electrical machine, was a resident of Philadelphia, the
entire correctness of this statement might be questioned, as there is reason to
belie%'e that there were competent mechanics in that line available in Phila-
delphia at that time.
Isaac John Greenwood is unable to say how his grandfather obtained his
information in dentistry. He says that he practiced it only in the construc-
tion of mechanical substitutes, but that in a portrait of him of life size, he
is represented with his left hand and arm resting upon an open volume of
Hunter's "Treatise Upon the Human Teeth," and ''which portrait I have
in my jjossession."' He practiced the making of artificial teeth verA' many
years previous to the Revolution. He used only bee"s-wax moulds for making
artificial teeth, which he constructed from hippopotamus teeth, and so did his
father, John Greenwood, who practiced in Xew York from 1785 to 1820.
This Isaac Greenwood had four sons and one daughter: Isaac, Jr., John,
William Pitt and Clark, and each of these obtained their dental informa-
tion from their father in his shop at Boston.
John, so his son says, never gained much information nliout the art of
dentistry from his father, as he joined tlie revolutionary army at fourteen
years of age, previous to the battle of Lexington, and was at the battle of
Bunker's Hill, etc. After peace he practiced as a mathematical instrument
maker, and quit that business to follow that, to him more profitable and
congenial, of mechanical and surgical dentistry, which he continued until
his death.
The third son, William Pitt, was instructed by his father in Boston.
He was a perfect master of the profession and died wealthy as the result
of his practice at Boston. The fourth son learned the profession from his
father, but never practiced in New York City for any length of time, and
the daughter's son, George Henry Gay of Dedham, Massachusetts, became
a doctor, a surgeon and a dentist, and practiced dentistry in Boston for a
number of years, acquiring a great reputation, "particularly in repairing
and replanting palatial (palatal) deformities." William Pitt Greenwood
and George Henry Gay, M. D., manufactured mineral teeth in their prac-
tices.
JOHN GREENWOOD.

John Greenwood, second son of Isaac II, was born in Boston, May 17,
1760, and was sent to school, where he was one of three or four hundred boys