The official world

(From newspapers.) People’s Welfare Minister Rudevics has raised the issue of disinfecting incoming items in order to protect officials.

Woman: “If you don’t mind: from the countryside with a petition?! First of all, present a certificate that you’ve had a bath; then a certificate that you have been vaccinated against smallpox, typhus, cholera, tuberculosis, or rhinitis, then a document that your family is not insane; then a covering letter disinfecting the petition; then …”
Petitioner: “Then I better wait and bring a certificate that I am dead and buried!…”
(Svari, Riga, 1927)

Man attacked by the flu

(Svari, Riga, 1929)

Bacteriological station

“Bac… ter… e… o… o… station. Eh…eh!!! Let’s go inside, Vasya, and have a drink!”
(Shut, St. Petersburg, 1893)

Flu at the League of Nations

The Journal des Débats reports that flu is spreading among the members of the League of Nations conference.
A.: “Straight unbelievable, when the work is at its most heated, and — the flu!”
B.: “It will be from that cool atmosphere inside.”
(Svari, Riga, 1924)

The Angel of Peace

Whoever thought that in the Hague
Everything would fail this time,
Was simply wreathed in error,
Because before you thought things over,
The Angel of Peace was there,
But he was called: cholera.
(Die Muskete, Vienna, 1912) (The First Balkan War was drawing to a close, and for the first time the Hague Conventions were to play a role in the negotiations. Complicating the proceedings was the outbreak of cholera on both sides of the Bulgarian-Turkish lines.)

Encephalitis lethargica

(Sleeping sickness)
(Svari, Riga, 1921)

Waiting for the flu…

Our doctor:
When the times come for us,
What do you see in other countries now?! . . .
(Svari, Riga, 1927)

Flu!

Don’t shake hands
Don’t cough near one another
Disinfect
Eat properly
(Postimees, Tartu, 1929)

Advice on scientific research

(Lachen links, Berlin, 1926)

Mixes up simple numbers–telephone operator.

Opens mouth up to 42 cm–people’s representative.

Keeps looking eastward–communist party secretary.

Has an unusually hard posterior–defense minister.

Suffers from chronic sleeping sickness, awakes only as the office is closing–office worker.

Buckles his belt to the last hole–worker.

At the pearly gates

“But don’t you know that you can’t come in here with a short haircut?”
“I can if I’ve had typhus.”
(Buen Humor, Madrid, 1926)

Force majeure

The Napoleon of the Balkans: “Guys, wait just a minute! If I’ve got cholera, I can’t march into Constantinople!”
(Kladderadatsch, Berlin, 1912) (The figure lampooned here was Radko Dimitriev, the Bulgarian general during the First Balkan War who directed the failed assault on the Chataldzha lines outside of Constantinople just weeks before this cartoon was published.)

Marvels of science

“Well, doctor, let’s see, what can medicine do about the flu?”
“Hum! hum! All that Medical Faculty could find is that the flu is called Gripta in Polish!”
(Le Monde comique, Paris, 1888)

Beware!

Yet another French pun about Spanish neutrality during the war:
“It won’t last long… It’s the Spanish flu.”
“It’s not serious, is it, doctor?”
“Heh! Don’t be fooled, it’s neutral.”
(Le Régiment, Paris, 1918)

Politicizing

It has been raining for six months, I lost my umbrella, the absinthe merchant refuses to look me in the eye, my wife is stepping out on me, cholera is still threatening…
And they call this a Republic!!!
(Le Monde comique, Paris, 1884)

What is superfluous?

(Le Régiment, Paris, 1919) (Sexist fare for the troops.)

Finally, what do we call superfluous?… Hors-d’oeuvre, for example… But they are necessary to admire the most rosy of the nails when they are unwrapped with an indolent finger…