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HISTORY OF DEXTAL SURGERY 269

and which permits the tooth to rest upon the gums instead of tlie gold plate.
Some claim that he was the tirst to use gold plate as a base in the United
States about 1784.
Some claim tliat John Greenwood was the first in the United States to
swage gold plates without a loiowledge of it having been done abroad. While in
New York he carved from the tusk of a hippopotamus a full set of teeth foi-
Washington. The lower set was made of one solid piece—teeth and base carved
together—in the upper denture the teeth were fastened on with gold rivets.
and both sets kept in place with spiral springs. In 1798 he repaired two sets of
teeth he made for Wasliington, and lie mentions screwing the teeth to the
bars instead of having the bars cast red hot on them.
A Swiss artist also made a set of teeth for Washington. One authority says
of these : "Tlie plate or framework which held the teeth in the mouth was
made of iron, and after Wasliington's death the teeth were sent to the New
York loan exhibition in aid of Washington's memorial arch, but the committee
deemed them too horrible to display."
Edward Hudson, from Ireland, settled in Philadelphia in 1805 and made
many inventions and devices.
John Randall was born in 1773 and settled in Boston, where his success
in crowning teeth was very great.
Leonard Koecker, in 183".' puljlished "An Essay on Artificial Teeth" and in
1842 "Principles of Dental Surgery." in wliicli he says: "In (Jermany, Rus-
sia, Holland, Portugal, Spain and Italy, dental surgery is far less advanced
than in other countries. When I was in Germany in 1823 I made the painful
observation that all my friends and relatives who had sought the assistance of
the dentist for anv other purpose than that of the extraction of a tooth, had
been most grievously injured, and that none of them had derived any benefit
from it whatever.
"I am informed that now in Rome there is not one dentist of prominence
in his profession.
"In 1811 after I came to the United States I saw a pivot tooth which had
been set by Dr. Kiihn, of Lancastei", Pennsylvania."
Jabez Parkhurst settled in New York in 1807 where he had a great repu-
tation, and carried on a general practice, said to have been the largest in the
city.
Tliese and many others were (captains in dentistry) pioneers, and men of
industry and mechanical ingenuity. They worked under great disadvantages.
but conquered in the end, and we sliould revere their memories.
Several rare cases of American mediai'val prosthesis, one of which is in the