The Wasp — 1888 — page 218: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is primarily **advertising and editorial content** rather than political satire. The dominant features are commercial advertisements for local San Francisco businesses (Fratinger's cloak house, L.A. Berteling optician, G.W. Clark & Co. wallpapers) and financial products (Imperial Austrian Vienna City Bond). The only cartoon visible is **"The King of Consumption"** — a decorative advertisement for a cough remedy. It depicts a crowned figure personifying the disease consumption (tuberculosis), styled as a villain being vanquished. This was common 19th-century medical advertising imagery, using melodramatic personification to market patent medicines. The page contains "The Irish Widow" serialized story and a satirical piece about bacon versus Shakespeare, but these are literary rather than visual satire.