Francis Wharton: Tale behind a denture made of deer teeth
Have you heard a story of a man who shot a deer, and then used its teeth to make himself a set of dentures, then ate the deer with the deer’s teeth?
Francis Wharton, often referred to as “Canada’s Backwoods Wizard,” was a different kind of mountain man. He lived near Little Fort, British Columbia, in the mid-20th century. Francis Wharton reportedly filed the teeth down, put them in plastic wood, and used house cement to finish the design. It was simple, expedient, and, most importantly, cheaper than trekking back to civilization for “real” dentures. In first 3 years of usage, only one tooth has broken. “That was when eating a particularly tough piece of bear meat, probably the first time in history that deer teeth have been broken eating bear.