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Pair 12: Documenting Disability

Pair 12: Documenting Disability

If anybody today thinks they know anything about George Washington’s physical appearance, it is that he had wooden teeth. Which isn’t true (they were made of ivory). But even so, this letter, discovered in the Henry Clinton Papers when they arrived in Ann Arbor in 1937, is extraordinary. Written by Washington to his dentist in Philadelphia in May 1781, asking for tools to adjust his dentures, this is the only known letter in which Washington mentions his now famous teeth (it is Number 50 in 101 Treasures). The letter was part of a batch of mail that was captured en route by a British agent and forwarded to General Henry Clinton at British headquarters in New York. Clinton debated whether the captured letters were authentic or were instead fakes that had been planted intentionally for the British to capture. Clinton felt that this letter, which reveals a personal weakness on Washington’s part, could not possibly have been phony, and thus put stock in the other captured letters, which included references to an American plan to attack New York that ultimately did not take place.

The recently acquired document from 1864 makes us read Washington’s letter in a new light. It bears the testimony of two doctors who both examined a Dorsy Hartsock, who volunteered twice to serve in the 101st Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. As both Dr. E.J. McCollum and Dr. George Yengling attest, Hartsock was rejected as being unsuitable for military service “on account of no teeth.” As McCollum writes, because of his bad teeth Hartsock “cannot chew any but the softest food.” In 1864, having bad teeth was a disability severe enough to render Dorsy Hartsock unfit for military service. Unable to chew the salt beef and hardtack that were the standard fare for soldiers in the field, Hartsock would have been an impediment to his unit (we know little about Hartsock, but he was likely born in 1827, so by 1864 he would have been nearly 40). George Washington, by contrast, was one of the wealthiest men in colonial America, and had been a military leader for over 20 years. He was of a class and station that permitted him access to the best medical care available. Even so, he also had bad teeth, and would have had difficulty eating many foods. His difficulties were so severe that he had a prosthetic device made for him to address his condition. So was George Washington also disabled? Does the fact that he was likely in constant pain from his teeth make us think about him differently? Should it?