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The Mongols Dined Atop their Live Enemies and Other Fascinating Historic Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 2, 2020 36 min

Battle of the Kalka River - Mongol Empire — Mongols feasting atop captives. Pintrest

12. Yanking Teeth as a Wedding Gift

Visiting a dentist is seldom pleasant, nor is having one’s teeth removed enjoyable. However, dentistry today is nothing like the horrors that used to pass for dentistry in centuries past. In nineteenth-century England, for example, dental hygiene standards were abysmal, and teeth frequently went bad in early adulthood. Whenever that happened and a tooth rotted, it meant a visit to the neighborhood barber/ surgeon, who yanked it out with pliers, without anesthetic.

To spare their kids the misery of having to go through that kind of pain several times in their lifetimes, some parents opted for “full teeth removal”, as a present to their offspring when they grew up. “Full teeth removal” meant exactly that: yanking out all the teeth from the mouth, and replacing them with dentures. Full teeth removal was considered such a fine gift, that it was frequently given to brides as a wedding present.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.