Life, 1891-09-10 · page 12 of 14
Life — September 10, 1891 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis This LIFE magazine page contains two distinct satirical elements: **The Comic Strip** (right side): A humorous domestic scene about a woman training her dog "Roger" with a rubber hose leash, giving him "more play." The joke is visual slapstick—the man misinterprets the scheme as romantic, thinking it's about his own relationship. **The Editorial Commentary** (bottom): A critique of pharmaceutical fraud and deceptive advertising. The text attacks "substitution"—drugstore owners palming off cheap, unadvertised medicines (like "Chickley's Champion Hair Renewer") when customers ask for well-known brand names (like "Bings's Bunion Blisters"). The accompanying vegetable caricatures (squash and watermelon with legs) appear to illustrate the point with anthropomorphized produce, though the exact satirical meaning of this visual metaphor is unclear. The satire targets both unethical druggists and the advertising industry's spending practices, suggesting that brand-name medicines succeed through marketing rather than merit.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
TiS IS A CLEVER SCHEME, MY DEAR. T HAVE TIED Rocer WITH A PIECE OF RUBBER Hose, IT GIVES HIM MORE PLAY Just cat. mist" SHE CALLS HIM. sill waiti she will wait a little longei And how sa y s This of thos: mixtures of romance and h life is made up. In vaul over th landed, sitting, ina basket of He is at this me four mile ar thee THE KEBOUND, THE daily press is agitated these days on the subject of + substitution.” ed in by druggists, and consists in palming off cou sof well advertised proprietary articles on unsuspecting customers. The customer who asks for Bings’s Bunion Blisters and who is induced by the wily drugger to take instead a dozen bottles of Chickley’s Champion Hair Renewer, deserves the sympathy y of the press, but of the entire American people. But it’s harder The Spuash: WATS THE MATTER WITH You > ( ta hundred thousand dollars on advertising, he Watermelon ; TOO MUCH WATERMELON, hile Chickley has spent nothing, comicbooks.com