In the past, false teeth weren't made of plastic. They were often "recycled" from the mouths of soldiers who died in battles!
Today, if you need false teeth, a dentist makes them from modern materials like porcelain or plastic. But 200 years ago, if you wanted a winning smile, you might have ended up wearing the teeth of a stranger who died in a war.
One of the most famous examples happened after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Thousands of young, healthy soldiers died on the battlefield. People called "body snatchers" would go out at night and pull the teeth from the fallen soldiers. These teeth were then sold to dentists, who cleaned them and put them into ivory plates for wealthy people to wear. These became known as "Waterloo Teeth."
In the 1700s and early 1800s, other options for false teeth were not very good. Some were made from the teeth of animals like hippos or walruses, but they didn't look natural and rotted very quickly, making the wearer's breath smell terrible. Real human teeth looked the best and lasted longer, even if they came from someone else.
Wearing a dead soldier's teeth might sound scary today, but back then, it was considered a luxury! It wasn't until the mid-1800s that scientists figured out how to make "porcelain" teeth that looked real and were much cleaner. Once these became popular, people stopped using the teeth of soldiers, and the strange era of "Waterloo Teeth" finally came to an end.
Before modern technology, dentures were often made from the real teeth of dead soldiers. Thousands of teeth were taken from battlefields like Waterloo to be sold to dentists. It was a dark and grizzly way to fix a smile, but it was the best option people had at the time.