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 the 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 sometime 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 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 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 narrative. When we reached Springfield, I stayed 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 literally “subsisting on savory 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 sidenote: 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 were 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 battlefields 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 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 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 traveled with his body as it took the over 1600-mile journey from Washington D.C. 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 lived 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 two 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!