“You see, dear colleague, over there lie three patients of mine. How nicely adorned the graves are! It is truly a divine garden, and the bodies are the seeds. It’s a grand thought, to be the divine sower!”
Context: cholera was resurgent at the time.
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1848)
Public Health Commission: “Honorable lady! I am begging you, leave us at long last, because this rabble is going to kill me in the end.”
Cholera: “It make no difference to me. It’s better for me here than it’s ever been anywhere in the world, and I can give my word of honor that I will never leave you again.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1910)
“They dismiss me as a troublesome foreigner, and yet I’ve got a proper passport from friendly Russia!”
(Lustige Blätter, Berlin, 1905)
“It’s no use, we have to ask for new cannons again. The current ones are not enough for such an enemy from the south.”
(Kopřivy, Prague, 1910)
Merchant with newspaper: “Didya see the business, Fedor Kuzmich, about cholera going beyond that Toulon thing.”
Second merchant: “Yes, kinsman, what good thing ever makes its way to us…”
Yardman: “Hey, mister merchants! The newspaper types are all lying to us, because the same cholera is constantly here at our owner’s place and if it weren’t for me, duckies, it would have gone further, but I keep it strictly in the back yard!”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1884)
“So, colleague, what have you come up with regarding cholera?”
“In case it appears in our city, I won’t take less than 25 rubles for a visit.”
“Bene; and that’s how I’ll travel around the cities.”
“What for, won’t there be enough patients for both of us.”
“It’s not that. As soon as cholera appears in the city, I’ll skip town and keep studying this disease in uninfected locales.”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1883)
Little lady: “As soon as it’s spring, these awful newspapers will start printing things about the falling exchange rate, about cholera in France and Italy… And what for? So that you men will have an excuse to deny wives the chance to spend the summer abroad.”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1885)
“What a pity, darling: my husband says that this summer we won’t have a carriage, because there is no cholera, and there won’t be carriages to take doctors from the city.”
“So you’re saying we won’t have to go on our promenades in a donated carriage!”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1874)
“Hey, Demid Egorovich, how are things going?”
“Oh, brother, Ermil Timofeich, better not to talk about it. It’s gotten to the point that you might as well lie down in the grave yourself and die! You remember how it was earlier with cholera, that’s the way things were, you just keep on working and the money, you’re raking in money by the spadeful. But these days you go out three times for a rich quickie, yeah, it’s such a shame, they’re already reading the last rites, but she’s still alive!”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1861)
Undertaker: “Poor thing, he’s wearing himself out. Better he should die.”
Doctor: “It’s nothing, let him get worn out! He was too stingy to pay for the visit.”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1885)
(The specter in the center is labeled “Comma,” signifying the cholera vibrio.)
Upper left: Now physicians are trying to do the right thing and penetrate inside their patients in order to ascertain whether they have the comma.
Upper right: Public health workers are searching for commas in every cesspool.
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1885)
Lower left: The Boss: “I can’t read your documents, there are so many commas! Right now it’s not even safe.”
Lower right: Husband: “Give you money to travel abroad, and where will I get it? The comma is there, too!”
Wife: “Oh, I want to go abroad to get away from this comma, too”
Wife: “All the newspapers are talking about cholera. I’m afraid! Are you afraid, sweetie?”
Husband-doctor: “Yes, I’m afraid… that it’ll never reach us…”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1883)
Cholera: “I want to dance with you,
doctor, in parting.”
Doctor: “It’s my pleasure. Good bye!
May you grace us again!”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1871)
“Juicy, well-fed bacteria freshly served at all times.” (Resoundingly disastrous success guaranteed.)
The Koch Bacteria Pub
(Max Pettenkofer was a famous Bavarian hygienist whose environmental explanations of disease were then in the process of being eclipsed by the new germ theory, of which Robert Koch was perhaps the most famous German proponent. This cartoon appeared just as the fifth cholera pandemic was cresting in Europe.) (The caption is cropped from this image; see link for original text.)
(Berliner Wespen, Berlin, 1884)
“Don’t leave us, don’t leave us! Don’t leave your native lands!”
(Sign in the background signals that pharmacists are singing the lament. Note the clystère under one pharmacist’s arm, a recurring theme.)
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1866)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 