Weston A. Price to Charles W. Chesnutt, 10 July 1931
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WESTON A. PRICE. D. D. S., M. S.
DENTAL RESEARCH LABORATORIES
8926 EUCLID AVENUE
CLEVELAND, OHIO
July 10, 1931.
Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt,
IdlewaldIdlewild,
Lake Co., Michigan.1
My dear Mr. Chesnutt:
I have your letter of July 8 and note that the repairs as made get loose when you are eating.2 It is quite possible that we could stabilize it by the following procedure. If you will clean the parts thoroughly near the flexible joint and then dry thoroughly in a flame and then melt some of the sticky wax which we are sending into the joint. This will stabilize the restoration so that it can be packed into the same container in which we are sending the wax. This permits us to put a model into the box and then we can unite the two parts rigidly. After drying the denture put the end of sticky wax in the flame and warm it slightly , candle flame will do, then warm the denture particularly about the joint so that when the wax is put on the denture it will flow freely over the surface with splendid contact. Put considerable excess wax on the side toward your tongue and only a little excess on the side toward the tissues. While the wax is still pliable, but sufficiently hardened so that it will not run place a piece in your mouth and bite on it. This will take the proper position and the soft tissues will adapt the wax on the under surface so that we can tell the shape of the arch. After chilling the wax by taking cold water into the mouth remove the wax very carefully and allow it to chill in cold water. The lay it between the folds of batting in the metal box and mail it to us. We will unite the pieces thus doing away with the flexible joint and making it rigid. This is of course dependent upon your wish to stabilize it now or when you return.
I hope you and Mrs. Chesnutt3 are keeping well. Mrs. Phillips4 is fixing up around her place subject to the entrance of the tenents who expect to be moving in within a few days.
Yours very sincerely, Weston A Price Weston A. Price. WAP:RMWP.S. A box for carrying denture is going under separate cover
Correspondent: Weston Andrew Valleau Price (1870–1948) was Chesnutt's White dentist and his longtime neighbor at 9703 Lamont Avenue. Originally from Canada, Price received his dentistry degree from the University of Michigan and began to practice in Cleveland in 1893. He improved dentistry technology, favored tooth extraction over saving infected teeth, and conducted research in nutrition as a general factor in common diseases.
1. Starting in 1922, the Chesnutts spent every summer until Chesnutt's death in Idlewild, in Lake County, Michigan, about 380 miles northwest of Cleveland. Idlewild was a popular lakeside resort for hundreds of Black families from the urban Midwest from the 1910s to the 1960s, when racism excluded them from many resort towns. In the spring of 1924, Chesnutt purchased a plot of land, where he had a summer home built in 1925. [back]
2. The two letters from Chesnutt to his dentist Dr. Price regarding his broken dentures have not been located. [back]
3. Susan Perry Chesnutt (1861–1940) was from a well-established Black family in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and worked as a teacher at Fayetteville's Howard School before marrying Chesnutt. They were married from 1878 until his death in 1932 and had four children: Ethel, Helen, Edwin, and Dorothy. Susan led an active life in Cleveland. [back]
4. Cordelia Louise Sudderth Phillips (1879–1963) was the widow of Dr. John Edward Phillips (1879–1929), a Cleveland physician who had co-founded the Cleveland Clinic (opened in 1921) and was one of 123 people killed in a fire at the clinic in 1929. Phillips owned a home next door to the Prices and Chesnutts at 9711 Lamont Avenue, but had moved Wade Park Manor, a residential hotel close to Western Reserve University, just before the fire, and the home was rented out. [back]
