John Greenwood's sidenotes on a 1778 John Hunter text at The New York Academy of Medicine.

Abstract

John Greenwood (1760-1819) was George Washington's preferred dentist. He practiced in New York and made at least one of eight sets of dentures Washington wore (currently in the collection of the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM). We know very little about John Greenwood's (JG) formal education, except that he came from a famous family of dentists. He inherited from his father, Isaac Greenwood, one important book of the time, John Hunter's 1778 treatise, A Natural History of the Human Teeth. That copy was donated to the New York Academy of Medicine by descendants of John Greenwood. Recently, we became aware of extensive marginalia that John Greenwood wrote in this book. The present article describes John Greenwood's opinion on a variety of dental subjects such as the causes and mechanisms of tooth destruction and gum disease and the presence of microscopic annamalcula that were thought to be connected to poor oral hygiene. Although John Greenwood was self-educated, his observations are surprisingly insightful and at least 37 years ahead of what was described in the contemporary literature.