Doctor Ernest Valdemar was a medical doctor who had studied at Harvard College. Valdemar had became friends with Benjamin Legrand while studying there. The two had had occasions to discuss Legrand's father's dental problems. Valdemar had a low opinion of the practice of transplanting teeth and especially of the individuals (who he called "harvesters") that collected them for sale to dentists. Rather than collect them from healthy young men who had fallen in battle, they were grave robbers who stole them from local graves by the light of the moon.