The Wasp — 1877 — page 296: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is the title page/cover of *The Wasp*, Vol. 1, No. 47 (San Francisco, June 23, 1877), published weekly for 10 cents. The cartoon below satirizes a contemporaneous fad involving "blue glass." The image shows a bedroom scene where a woman presents an infant in a cradle to a startled man wearing a bowler hat. The caption suggests blue glass was being marketed with miraculous health claims—likely as a supposed cure-all or fertility aid. The man's shocked expression implies either disbelief in the remedy's efficacy or surprise at an unexpected result. The satire targets credulous consumers who believed in pseudoscientific health products popular in the 1870s.