A closer look
Scavengers violently extracted tens of thousands of teeth from dead soldiers on the battlefield of Waterloo in 1815 to supply the booming British market for high-end luxury dentures. Before the invention of modern porcelain dental implants, wealthy aristocrats who ruined their own teeth with massive amounts of imported sugar desperately needed replacements, and the jaws of fallen young military men provided the perfect inventory. Dentists proudly advertised these grim economic commodities as Waterloo teeth, turning a horrific military bloodbath into a lucrative supply chain opportunity for the British cosmetic industry. It is wonderfully dark proof that early capitalism was perfectly happy to recycle human remains if there was a solid profit margin involved. So if you ever feel like modern corporations are aggressively extracting value from your mortal flesh, just remember that nineteenth-century dentists literally monetized casualties of war
