That's different, those are dead/killed teeth used to make a denture. I don't think they were trying to make them grow in George's gums.

that's a different theft of a live person's teeth?

wild

I wasn't debating the ethics of buying a poor and enslaved person's teeth off them, I just wanted to correct the idea that George was jamming them into his gums hoping they would grow. The teeth were used in dentures.

Yes, a social system in which your involuntary labor all goes to your "owner" and in which you are reduced to selling your teeth for spending money is an abhorrent one.

It's capitalism ad absurdum. Sure, today people are born "free", but they still have to pay money to keep a roof overhead and food on the table, and that same money can be used, say, for dental procedures that could save teeth, so in a way people still have to make choices about whether they'd rather have money or teeth. They just also have more options for getting money. You can still see the impact of these forced choices in poor people's mouths.

The beneficiaries of this indirect coercion -- when restricted to the subject of teeth -- are today mostly dentists, and the actions chosen are mostly inactions (skip treatment, get a cheaper treatment). In those days, the beneficiaries included people who needed dentures, and the actions were less passive: They involved submitting to pliers.

On the ethical spectrum, it's somewhere quite a bit worse than buying a wig made of a Pakistani lady's hair, but better than buying a Chinese prisoner's kidney.

I'd really like to see a source for the medieval transplantation method to be honest. I would have figured there would have been better options than that. The wikipedia article itself seems to suggest that there may have been more sophistication to the method.

Also seems like there's evidence of the practice going way back to ancient Egypt, which isn't hugely surprising but it's crazy that this is something established for at least as long as good old cruelty-free metal teeth [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_transplant

[2] https://www.livescience.com/46788-ancient-dental-implant-fou...

Yeah, this idea that you can transplant another person's tooth without rejection is very interesting. The mouth is pretty special in terms of its ability to heal, so you can half-believe it, but I'm skeptical. I'd also love to see a source.

(Edit: The history section of your Wikipedia link [1] is interesting.)

Yeah it kind of sounds like it was more sophisticated than that from what I glanced over. Sutures and the like