How nice of you to come

“How nice of you to come down to my place! You will help me treat a friend who’s arriving from Rio de Janeiro with yellow fever.”
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1878)

The meat market

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink.” Matthew 6:25
(Shelves include “tuberculosis lard.” This was published later in the year when Upton Sinclair levelled his devastating indictment of the Chicago meatpacking industry in The Jungle.)
(Puck, New York, 1906)

Spanish flu souvenir

(Le Régiment, Paris, 1919)

“I’m panicked… my husband, who’s gone to the provinces on business, is stuck in bed down there with the Spanish flu…”

“I can’t stand it any longer… I love him too much… I’m going to join him… A few light clothes and off we go!…”

“Here’s his hotel!!! Here’s the door to his room… In we go!”

“Oh, what a sight!!! I sure see the Spanish… but where is the flu???”

Not God, but smallpox

“My dear, I got vaccinated…”
“And me too, right here…”
“Our age no longer fears God, but it greatly fears smallpox!”
(Le Journal amusant, Paris, 1907)

From medical practice

A farmer comes to the doctor to get vaccinated. The doctor, already busy vaccinating several women, tells him to wait in the next room and just undress for the time being. The farmer goes out and after a quarter of an hour, to the horror of the doctor, comes in again stripped down to his shirt:
“If you don’t step outside, you insolent fellow,” the doctor yells, “get dressed again immediately!”
“Yes, what do I know, Doctor,” says the farmer, “where one is vaccinated.”
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1871)

Fashionable illness

“He’s not moving anymore, you–knocked him out.”
“Not at all, I think he is suffering from encephalitis lethargica!”
(Le Journal, Paris, 1920)

Cholera ward

How Mr. Waldeck-Rousseau, Mr. Hérisson, and Mr. Raynal visited and comforted the sick in Marseille and Toulon.
(Le Triboulet, Paris, 1884) (Waldeck-Rousseau was minister of the interior, Hérisson was minister of commerce, and Raynal was minister of public works in the government of Jules Ferry.)

The benefits of plague

(La Revista da semana, Rio de Janeiro, 1900) (While I can’t capture the idiom, the point of the cartoon is clear. There are similar flu-related cartoons in Czech and Hungarian versions.)

The first creditor appears on the stairs,…
Another comes up, and another…

…yet another,… finally dozens
They knock on Casusa’s door, “a bloody fresh band at dawn.”
Casusa arrives at the door, burning in [illegible]. And he says to the people in a very stern tone, “I have bubonic plague around the house.”

“Plague?! Jesus! We’ve got to leave now!!”

Encephalitis lethargica

“Is that a parliamentary deputy? He’ll sleep for four years.”
(Le Matin, Paris, 1920)

On the coast

“Have you ever drunk that bloody rotgut that the English call whiskey?”
“Yes.”
“Well! that’s what cured me of yellow fever on the coast of Africa.”
(Le Journal amusant, Paris, 1907)

His Majesty at the border

“What do you mean, you want to force me to quarantine at the Spanish border?”
“Your majesty will pardon us, Sire, we are only carrying out your orders. You have imposed a quarantine on all travelers coming from countries infested by cholera or plague…”
“Well!”
“But, Sire, your Majesty is coming from France and could bring us the republic.”
(Le Triboulet, Paris, 1883)

French cholera plague quarantine cartoon

The League of Nations is sick

“What does she have?…”
[Woodrow Wilson] “Encephalitis lethargica…”
(L’Avenir, Paris, 1920)

The vaccine

(City Council members fighting over budgets)
“And does this mean there’s cause for alarm?”
“No, ma’am; but the City Council recommends the vaccine because while the people are occupied with this, they won’t remember the other stuff.”
(La Esquella de la torratxa, Barcelona, 1912)

Daily items

(Le Triboulet, Paris, 1884)

To avoid cholera:
1. Be clean
2. Be sober
3. Don’t walk too much
4. Don’t eat ice cream
5. Smoke in moderation
6. Beware of humidity
(signed) Dr. Koch

Cazot is bound to catch the microbe, since he would rather drown than take a bath.

Temperance being the primary necessity, Jules Ferry, a great swallower of all things Chinese, will be an excellent subject for the scourge. [As Prime Minister, Ferry was the chief culprit in accelerating French colonial entanglements in Indochina.]

The violent exertion that Mr. Cochery is giving himself to quickly send us our despatches and letters will be fatal to him. [Cochery was Minister of Posts and Telegraphs.]

Abusing ice cream is fatal: enamelling is a lost gift. [Punning on the double meaning of “mirror.”]

How can we prevent our respectable people from smoking a lot, since, with their driving permits, they have more than six stations at their disposal?

We can say to Grévy [president of the Republic]: “Don’t lie down on the grass, he won’t want to give up his pelouze.” [Grévy was rumored to be having an affair with the wealthy socialite Marguerite Wilson-Pelouze.]

Epidemic

“The smallpox vaccine gave all the kids who have math homework a little fever today.”
(Carrefour, Paris, 1955)