Epochal invention

A multi-panel cartoon by Karel Stroff from Humoristické listy (Prague, 1915), drawn at a time during World War I when cities were beginning to experience food shortages, and producers were frequently suspected of overcharging for ersatz materials unsuited for human consumption.

The famous Professor Mikrobec pondered: So many diseases can be averted by vaccination, and one of the most terrible is raging in today’s war. I have to find a serum against it.

2. At the “qualified authorities”: Rest assured, gentlemen, that my invention will not disappoint. We can start tomorrow.

3. It’s nothing, sir, vaccination is healthy. There are so many diseases today…

4. For Christ’s sake, old man, what are you doing? Throw away all the crumbs in the morning, and now make buns like there’s no tomorrow… Are you crazy?
I’m not crazy, but that’s the way it is, that’s the right and honest thing…

5. People cheered on this miracle–

6. (Signs reading “Glory to the most useful scientist!!” and “Long live the inventor of the serum against extortion!!”)
and the grateful nation demanded enthusiastic applause for the professor.

In the field of mandatory vaccine

Joe Public’s attitude as imagined by Mr. Oswaldo Costas Quentes, in view of the geniality of his German regulation… [Biologist and public health official Oswaldo Cruz is at the head of the spear pressing at the breast of Joe Public.]

Joe Public’s actual attitude
Now please don’t toy with me! I don’t want to know about politics! I won’t have any instigators and I’m not scared of your antics!
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1904) (On the complicated politics of obligatory vaccination in Brazil, see also this cartoon.)

The smallpox statute

“There’s a statute from the Ministry of the Little People that’s just come out.”
“Has it really? What luck! And what is it?”
“We no longer have to be vaccinated if we don’t want to; from now on we can get smallpox undisturbed…”
(De ware Jacob, Rotterdam, 1903)

Effects of plague

At the salon of Counselor Mumia:
The poet Gadelha, after many requests, will recite a poem of his own (free!).
In the second stanza, with tremors in her voice, she would gargle at him:
“I escaped the black ISOLATION.”

“Isolation?!” (General stampede)
(Revista da Semana, Rio de Janeiro, 1900)

In the age of vaccination mania

Canisters labeled “measles vaccine,” “yellow fever vaccine,” “dysentery vaccine,” “cholera vaccine.”
“When I’m having myself vaccinated against all diseases now, it’s a matter of life and death!”
(Kikeriki, Vienna, 1885)

The epidemics

Yellow fever, plague, and smallpox stand arrayed in chorus against public health in the person of Oswaldo Cruz, the biologist and government official most closely identified with Brazil’s efforts to introduce obligatory vaccination.
(choir in the background) “If it weren’t for you getting in the way of our sinister steps, what a good harvest we would have made during the visit of the American fleet!”
(Revista da Semana, Rio de Janeiro, 1908) (Compare Oswaldo Cruz’s iconic status in O Malho.)

Six-week holiday

“Where is the Counsellor going then?”
“Well, he was vaccinated against smallpox and for the sake of better recuperation he is just starting a six-week holiday…”
(Humoristické listy, Prague, 1915)

Sarrasqueta in quarantine

A tale from Caras y caretas, Buenos Aires, 1920.

Sarrasqueta, after suffering storms and tribulations, arrives happily at the sight of Buenos Aires, eager to disembark and embrace his friends.

The passengers, who were weak from not eating on schedule, now dedicate themselves to making up for the previous fasting.

And the cramps and pains begin. The Health Department declares the ship infected with a terrible epidemic of influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, toothache, and other scourges..

The choir of doctors orders the passengers to undergo a thorough health inspection and rigorous quarantine. As if counting sheep, they first order the ladies to parade before them at great speed to check their tongues, and to be able to see a thousand an hour.

Then, at a slow trot, the first-class gentlemen and third-class men parade by the doctors. Sarrasqueta is in line with his tongue sticking out from exhaustion and pale with emotion.

The doctor, seeing him pale and with a white tongue, stops him, declaring him unclean. Sarrasqueta accedes, but claims it is from having eaten meringues for dessert.

The doctor takes his temperature. Sarrasqueta asks him not to tickle him with the thermometer, because he’ll be laughing for the whole year.

They tell him that they are going to give him a vaccine against flu, scabies, and rabies. Sarrasqueta defends himself by saying that he is neither a test body, nor a guinea pig.

They order his gothic curls to be shaved off with the clipper, perhaps so that no one takes his hair.

A public health employee arrives, not very clean, and with a fogger for killing ants he fumigates Sarrasqueta from head to toe.

They put the luggage in the disinfection oven, and they return it to him burnt to a crisp. And then they condemn him to undergo days of quarantine until they see the result of the vaccine.

All in the family

“How is father?”
“Not great, his hand hurts.”
“And Mom?”
“Really bad, her leg hurts.”
“At least you are well?”
“Oh, no, and something hurts. Because you see, our whole family got vaccinated for smallpox, it’s just that it was every person in a different place on the body.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1900)

Vaccination in the seraglio

The Sultan’s harem must be vaccinated
and thus preserved against the smallpox.
A sultana with a lush bosom
extends her snow-white, round arm.
Small odalisques, slightly pretentious,
with lingerie and graceful,
how easily they hover behind a screen.
However it is bandaged and vaccinated,
the seraglio must not be profaned.
No, sultana, beware,
for behold, the eunuch is on his guard!
And as vigilant as the dragons of fairy tales,
the Grand Sultan himself guards his treasure.
For the slightest tilt, oh, odalisque,
you can easily run a dangerous risk.
The “life doctor” can only see the arm,
but no sign of décolletage.
Otherwise a prisoner (no, what befalls?)
a silk cord around his neck.
Now the vaccination is over,
with the “sick man” on the imperial throne,
in purple cloak and ermine,
he does not recover from his vaccine.
(Fäderneslandet, Stockholm, 1887)

Heavenly bodies in 1910

Stargazer: “Damn, I see another comet there!”
(De ware Jacob, Rotterdam, 1910) (When this cartoon appeared in 1910, the last great cholera pandemic was slowly petering out. Halley’s comet also returned to earthly view that same year, an ill portent for some. In Dutch the word for body in “heavenly body” can also signal “corpse.” See also a Russian cartoon on the Halley’s comet theme.)

The smallpox tragedy in two pictures

(A scene in the Chamber)
Brazilian parliamentary deputy, military officer, and sometime ally of the Church of Positivism Alexandre José Barbosa Lima: “Look, Mr. President! Our brothers, our wives, our children, fouled by vaccine, demoted to the role of guinea pigs! Misery! Protest! In the name of Comte, I positively must protest for all the juntas!” [“Junta” might simply mean “committee,” but Barbosa Lima ended up supporting the oligarchical politics which the Positivists had opposed.]

(Street scene, the cemetery entrance)
Barbosa Lima: “Behold, the victims of a black epidemic arrive. There are so many! Finally, as the dead govern the living, it is always a comfort to be sure that we have many people to govern us…
Peace to the dead! My sect [the Church of Positivism] is against the vaccine… and I find myself respectful of the consequences of its dogmas. Health and fraternity, oh! The dead are passing!”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1904)
For more on the complicated politics of Positivist opposition to compulsory vaccination, see Robert Nachman.

At Professor Carrel’s lab

(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)

Mr. Beetle’s family

The nature and mishaps of a small family – The Beetles are ill.
Mrs. Beetle: “Hubby, I have a terrible headache… Go get the doctor!”
Mr. Beetle: “Hope it’s not the flu!”
“Honey, I brought you this lady, Dr. Mazlová!”
Mrs. Beetle: “Hm.”
Dr. Mazlová: “You need rest!”
Mrs. Beetle: “Dear, I’ll get up! I’m fine now!”
Dr. Mazlová: “I’m a cardiac specialist.”
Mr. Beetle: “Could you cure my heart?”
(later)
Mr. Beetle: “Dear! I’m so sick, summon Dr. Mazlová!”
Mrs. Beetle: “What’s going on? I’ll call!”
Mr. Beetle: “The pounding. The pounding … My head is killing me!”
Mrs. Beetle: “Here’s Doctor Krása!”
Doctor Krása: “You need rest!”
Mr. Beetle: “Get out! I’m already feeling better!”
Doctor Krása (to Mrs. Beetle): “Always seek my assistance!”
(Komár, Brno, 1927)

Soccer at the smallpox “field”

Director of the Department of Public Health Oswaldo Cruz (wearing Public Health sash): “The vaccine kills the pigskins! It’s written in our books, it’s a proven fact! The goal of your positivism and your science in…”
Mathematician, philosopher, and vaccination opponent Raimundo Teixeira Mendes (wearing Positivist sash): “The goal is yours, you slob! I’ll prove to you by A + B how it’s me who’s with the good of humanity!…”
Joe Public: “Yes! keep arguing! Pick a fight about whether the line of the “footballer” is making your goals [victims], and fairly. In this three-month “match” there are already 2,432…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1908)