“Bring your right- hand short round to your pouch, flapping it hard, seize the cartridge, and bring it with a quick motion to your mouth, bite the top off down to the powder, covering it instantly with your thumb, and bring the hand as low as the chin, with the elbow down.”
– Johnson, Guy, Manual Exercise, Evolutions, Maneuvres, & c. To be Observed and Followed by the Militia of the Province of New-York, 1772, p. 8.
Starting with the Revolutionary War, early American dentists including John Greenwood, Charles Wilson Peale, Josiah Flagg, and Paul Revere among others all served in the Continental Army and would go on to establish themselves as pioneers in the dental field.
Many of the established dentists in the colonies were foreign born and trained, however. During the Revolutionary War, Dr. Jean-Pierre Le Mayeur, a French dentist in particular became well-known for initially providing dental services to British senior officers and switching sides to become George Washington’s personal dentist. Another French-born dentist, James (Jacques) Gardette, was a French Naval Surgeon, who would become a civilian dentist in the Comte de Rochambeau’s French army that would help lead to the Continental Army’s victory in Yorktown.
For most of the soldiers in the Continental Army, however, crude extractions and treatments with calomel (also known as mercurous chloride) that further caused oral health issues were commonplace.
