(Early in 1911 the French-American medical researcher Alexis Carrel, then working at Rockefeller University, drew attention in The New York Times for having “succeeded in stimulating the growth of animal tissues outside the body” and “caus[ing] cancer tissues to grow after removal from the human body.” The bearded professor depicted here bears little resemblance to the clean-shaven Carrel, who would soon win the Nobel Prize for Medicine for other work. But the Polish cartoonist in Russian-ruled Warsaw somehow managed to find inspiration for a political jab, so to speak, at his oppressors.)
“Professor, apparently you make excellent vaccines [sic] for the human body? Wouldn’t you be able to graft twenty hands onto me?” [a strange pun, since rąk can also mean cancer; the word for “graft” can also mean “inoculate”]
“Are you a musical artist?”
“No, Professor. I am the Russian quartermaster.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1911)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 