The Elkhart Truth provides the background:
The concrete block stands in a yard at the northwest corner of Riverside Drive and Lexington Avenue. It’s hard to make out the teeth from the sidewalk. But take a closer look into the cracks that run along its face, and you’ll find dozens of them — from the roots to the crowns — piercing through the stone...More details and additional photos at the link.
After posting a picture of the concrete block on social media, Elkhart residents shared their childhood memories of it. Some remember playing on top of the block, picking teeth out of the concrete and scaring other children with them...
It was a memorial to Stamp’s childhood dog — a German Shepherd named Prince — according to his granddaughter, Susan Howard...
Neither Howard nor her three older brothers could say why Stamp filled the monument with teeth, but she said it probably saved him on concrete... He pulled thousands of teeth as a dentist and kept all of them, Howard said. Stamp collected the teeth in a barrel in his office’s basement...
In older times he could have sold the teeth for use in dentures.... What do dentists now do with the teeth they extract? And, isn't it too bad that dentistry has found no solution to tooth decay other than to extract the tooth? Perhaps we were never meant to outlive our teeth....
ReplyDeleteMy dentist said they are thrown into Bio-hazard bags and then incinerated unless they have fillings, if they have fillings they are recycled for the metal.
ReplyDeleteMy chemistry textbook says that fluoridated salt, essentially makes people immune to caries, which I firmly believe and practice and anecdotally can confirm.
ReplyDeleteBut I guess in some countries, it's more of an anti-vaccine / conspiracy theory situation. (Stupid) fancy folk would rather grind those flaky salt grains from the world's premier garbage and sewage dump, called the sea.