The Wasp — 1896 — page 529: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon depicts two women on a couch discussing a medicine bottle. The caption jokes about purchasing "a lovely bottle of medicine" warranted to cure St. Vitus's dance, marked down from a dollar to a cent. The humor satirizes 19th-century patent medicine fraud—widely sold "cure-alls" with dubious or harmful ingredients marketed aggressively to desperate consumers. The extreme price reduction (dollar to penny) mocks how sellers inflated original prices to suggest value, then offered "bargains" to manipulate buyers. The women's enthusiasm despite the absurdly low price suggests they're either naive or complicit in the scam. This reflects contemporary concerns about unregulated medical products preying on vulnerable populations, particularly women seeking treatments for legitimate neurological conditions like St. Vitus's dance (likely chorea).