The Wasp — 1877 — page 135: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is primarily **text and advertisements** rather than political cartoons. The left column contains a historical article about illustrated journalism in America, tracing the development of wood-engraved newspapers from the 1850s onward, crediting pioneers like Frank Leslie and mentioning Harper's Weekly. The right side features **patent medicine advertisements** for "Opium and Morphine Eaters," "Laudanum," and "Paregoric Drinkers" — promoting S.T. Pearce's purported cure for addiction. These ads prey on widespread 19th-century drug dependency, using dramatic language about becoming "slaves" to "tyrannical" habits. The juxtaposition is ironic: a serious discussion of American journalism appears alongside exploitative nostrum advertising — precisely the kind of questionable content satirical magazines like The Wasp often mocked.