Viennese vaccination

At the Imperial Royal Vaccination Institute [Austrian prime minister Count Max von Beck administering the shots to Hungarian ministers]
Hungarian prime minister Sándor Wekerle [second from left] (to the smallpox inoculator) “Take care then, Doctor, we don’t want to be seen with the Viennese pock on us!”
(Borsszem Jankó, Budapest, 1907)
(The decadal negotiations to renew the 1867 Compromise between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the Habsburg Empire were exceptionally contentious in 1907. The electoral franchise was broader in Austria than it was in Hungary, and Beck threatened to extend it to the Transleithanian portion of the empire, which would have threatened the ability of Hungarian politicians to control the fractious minorities who slightly outnumbered the Hungarian population. The mark on Minister of Agriculture Ignác Darányi’s shoulder reads “Serbian livestock,” signaling grudging Hungarian accession to a common tariff agreement, while Wekerle’s reads “common bank,” i.e., shared currency.)