Israel's News & Views Blog
A tooth that was pulled from Napoleon Bonaparte’s pie hole will go up for auction next week at the Dominic Winter Auction House in Swindon, England. Its expected to go for $ 7,000 to $ 9,000 from the auction catalogue. An upper right permanent canine tooth, believed to have been extracted from Napoleon’s mouth by his St. Helen physician Barry O’meara, 1817, the tooth well worn, cracked and brown stained to the root, glued to a piece of card with a biro inscription ( in Cecilia Laura Whites hand ) loosely contained in a small old glazed casket with a gilt trim.
Together with a soiled card written by Cecilia Whites mother Cecilia Montagu, plus an engraved brass name plaque of Francesco Macroni, a note written by Dr. Alexander Baxter, deputy inspector of hospitals on St. Helena island recording this extraction in a letter of 17th November 1817:
I have the honor to inform your Excellency that Napoleon Bonaparte suffered a good deal from toothack, and in consequence was induced to permit Mr. O’meara to extract the dent. This is the first surgical operation that has ever been performed upon his body. The tooth was carious in two places.
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Trust the french to make money even from a rotten tooth.
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