“Won’t you permit me, dear brothers from across the Vistula, a little cholera?”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1908)
Some rhyming couplets on the same page offer counsels for Warsaw residents during a cholera epidemic:
Whoever doesn’t want to be infected with the cholera bacillus,
Let him not remember that there is martial law.
In these choleric times things are not headed in a healthy direction
Think about Filevich or Menshikov. [Russian monarchists hostile to Polish separatist sentiments]
The best epidemic fostered among humans,
Where people get irritated by what Rossiya writes. [monarchist newspaper]
Don’t worry about the Swabs in Łódź either,
For you will definitely grab the spare hospital.
The nicest thought is still that whether you are a Belgian or a Turk,
And you will be healthy, even though you ate a raw cucumber.
For the worst thought in the world is
That you bear the heavy lot of the Pole on your neck.
Sic Transit Pestilentia 