The Wasp — 1890 — page 349: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is primarily **advertising and notices** for steamship companies and patent medicines, typical of 1890s publications. The central cartoon depicts a quack medicine pitch—a charlatan salesman (labeled "C.C. LINIMENT") with exaggerated features hawking his bogus cure-all to a credulous customer. The satire targets **fraudulent patent medicine** marketing, a widespread 19th-century problem. The large text "For Catarr C.C. LINIMENT Has No Peer. Try It" mocks absurdly broad medical claims. Surrounding testimonials and pseudo-scientific language parody how manufacturers exploited consumer desperation. The joke: the medicine claims to cure everything from catarh to neuralgia, revealing the obvious scam to contemporary readers familiar with such dubious products.