Public health physician writing official order that no more than three persons can live in this room: “But how can we fight tuberculosis if there is no housing, if poor people live piled up together?!… Carry out the orders at last! This room only has space for three people… Write!”
A tenant next door to the crowded room: “Hey, doc! I saw that sign you made and I’m telling you that your account is wrong! This room is the same size as that one, and all the people you see live here: me, my wife, my six–nearly seven–children, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, and…
Physician: “What! Even more people?”
Tenant: “… and inside, Doctor, I still have a painting with the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity!”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1907)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 