Same wagon, different century. The bottles even look the same.
The snake-oil salesman never left. He got a TED Talk, swapped the wagon for a keynote stage, and replaced “MIRACLE TONIC” with “AI POWERED.” The crowd in this painting has the same expression as the one at CES: half skeptical, half reaching for their wallets. It does not matter that the product does the same nothing it did in 1885. The banner is large enough to read from the back of the crowd and the man is confident enough to hold up the bottle like it cures cancer. The moustache is period-accurate. The business model is eternal.