An amusing illustration in light of our present concerns about physical distancing. But the more so in view of its intentional juxtaposition on the same page with an entry in “Mr. Pips his Diary.” Punch‘s Pepys relates a conversation with a physician on a crowded train in which said physician complains of “the Foulness of London for Want of fit Drainage, and how it do breed Cholera and Typhus, as sure as rotten Cheese do Mites, and of the horrid Folly of making a great Gutter of the River.” Truly, “the Bustle of Railways do destroy all the Dignity of Travelling.”
(Punch, London, 1849)
There are some similarities in this German cartoon from Kladderadatsch (1889).
Sic Transit Pestilentia 