The Wasp — 1877 — page 59: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a satirical series mocking temperance advocates and their moral preaching. The title's dedication to "the Dashaways" (a real 19th-century temperance organization) signals the target. The cartoons show a hungover drunk suffering various indignities—waking with a terrible hangover, going to work with a bloody nose, getting his coat muddy, visiting a doctor. Throughout, he ironically quotes temperance platitudes ("Similia similibus curantur"—treating like with like) while simultaneously drinking to ease his symptoms. The satire's point: temperance lectures are hypocritical and ineffective. The drunk acknowledges their wisdom ("I wish to gracious I had stayed in bed") but continues drinking anyway, suggesting moral exhortation cannot overcome human weakness or addiction. The cartoons mock both alcoholics' self-deception and temperance movements' naive faith in rhetoric.