Your money where your mouth is: the role of consumerism in eighteenth-century transplant surgery

Abstract

ABSTRACT If you had enough money, in the late eighteenth century, you could pay a dentist to replace your rotten teeth with someone else’s healthy teeth. The tooth transplant was technically simple by the standards of today’s transplant surgery – the surgeon simply inserted a freshly-drawn tooth into the recipient’s mouth, and tied it in place until it united with the body – but the cultural and economic significance of the operation is far more complex. This article examines the role of the economy and economic metaphors in the cultural significance of eighteenth-century tooth transplant. It specifically analyses concepts of financial, societal, and bodily circulation as they appear in representations both of the procedure, and of emerging donor-recipient relationships. In exploring these three kinds of circulation, this article will draw together and extend work on the commercialisation of dentistry, the social dynamic of the tooth transplant, and vitalist discourse of John Hunter.