Gaze Upon The Toothy Horror That Is Dental Practice Dummies

If you think going to a dentist's office is an unpleasant experience, imagine what dentists have to go through. Day in and day out, they have to spend their time in their sterile prison, gawking down gaping maws, listening to the scraping of drills against ivory, and being confronted with the stench of tooth decay and their failed medical degree. How can they stand it? Well, it turns out that they get pretty desensitized during their training, as most of dental school looks like one long Halloween nightmare.

Like barbers (before and after they were the ones pulling teeth), it takes a while before student dentists get to practice their trade on living beings. Before that, they have to spend a lot of time training on dummies. And if you scrub through eBay listings of old-timey dental practice mannequins, you'll be supplied with a lifetime of minty-fresh nightmares.  

Just look at these gawking horrors. No wonder dentists are so numb to the horrors of the human mouth if they have to spend years surrounded by what looks like the infernal chorus you'd hear while being led down to the circle of hell reserved for necrophiles and people who don't floss.

And how else will they be prepared to treat the gingivitis of all kinds of fictional ghouls? No dentist will be caught off guard the day they have a character from Hellraiser sitting in their chair. Or for that matter, RoboCop:

Luckily, dental schools have realized that these zombie mannequins can be a little unsettling. That's why there are also what one eBay reseller refers to as "head shrouds," which mask the bare skulls with an unholy face shell that looks like it was pre-owned by Buffalo Bill. 

Or, if draping the simulated skin of a dad of two over your cyber skull still tugs on those heartstrings too much, might interest you in what I call the Zipper Hitler?

Are we sure these mannequins don't have something to do with dentists' ridiculously high suicide rate? Because if you had to spend years staring down the gullet of an android corpse whose mouth seems stuck mid-sentence, and that sentence is: "Please don't kill me, I feel love," you'd become dead inside too.   

For more anti-dentist sentiments, do follow Cedric on Twitter.

Top Image: eBay