Life — February 11, 1892 — page 21: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes a common medical practice of the era. A druggist (left) has just sold a man an expensive prescription, and now the man's boy returns to the drugstore to sell the unused medicine back. The humor relies on the caption's ironic dialogue: the druggist gave a lead dollar as payment for the prescription, filled it out and sent the boy down to the drugstore to sell it and get the lead. They'll "get twice the cost of the drugs out of it anyhow." The satire targets two things: (1) the inflated cost of prescription medications in that period, and (2) the implication that drugstores profited excessively by reselling returned medicines. It suggests ordinary people viewed prescriptions cynically as wasteful expenses that could be recouped.