The Wasp — 1879 — page 199: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This eight-panel comic strip satirizes the dental profession through slapstick humor. A patient arrives with a toothache, and a dentist promises quick relief. However, the visit devolves into comedic chaos: the dentist repeatedly extracts the wrong teeth, the patient suffers increasing pain and distress ("Currrrrunch!"), and multiple extractions fail to address the original problem. By panel 7, the dentist suggests expensive false teeth ($5), implying financial exploitation of desperate patients. Panel 8 shows the patient leaving, having apparently had his teeth destroyed and wallet emptied, while the dentist asks about unrelated gossip. The satire targets dentists as incompetent, profit-driven practitioners who harm rather than help patients—a common Victorian-era anxiety about dental medicine's reliability and ethics.