Category: cholera

Cholera, fear, and other tragedies

(La Esquella de la torratxa, Barcelona, 1884)

Stop the train! Fumigation… or no fart shall pass through the cordon.

Catalan cholera cartoon

For some reason… the separate fumigant is hidden.

“Let’s go back, Laurence, let’s go back: these people must not have phoenix acid and they would like to disinfect us with lead pills.”

“Give me a piece of cord.”
“Young lady, I don’t have any, nor is it easy for me to find it anywhere: they have spent everything to cordon off the province.”

“Where is this box from?”
“From Alicante…”
“From Alicante?… Help, assistance, microbes!”

“Carry on!”
“Take me? I do what they have commanded.”
“Yes? Well, that’s how; like a kangaroo.” (??)

Comma-bacillus assembly

Or: Cholera meeting at the Peach Hospital
The image is accompanied by statements from Dr. Cheeseslicer, Dr. Bacillus Bacterius, Dr. Bablesi-Bibasiu (the Hungarian Pasteur), Dr. Striker! (Louis the Great, Cholera King), Dr. Veterinarius Bacterius, and Dr. Lacyllus Lupus. A note at the end indicates, “While the doctors strew about the seeds of the theory, Cholera Asiatica reaps happily, and Dr. Cheeseslicer notes with consolation: Yet this is cholera nostras and not Asian, because they are dying for us!”
(Bolond Istók, Budapest, 1886) (Yes, this wants further parsing in the context of domestic politics.) (See also this Dutch variant of cholera nostras.)

Hungarian cholera cartoon

Croup vs. Krupp

Servatius: Guess which disease has taken the most people in recent years.
Pancras. I think it’s cholera or typhus.
Servatius. No.
Boniface. It’s probably smallpox and consumption.
Servatius. Also no. So you should know that the croup was the most lethal.
Pancras. What are you talking about, the croup only takes children, and anyway, several medications have already been found.
Servatius. But because you see, I’m talking not about this croup that strangles children, but about this Krupp which pours several thousand cannons a year in Essen.
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1875)

Polish cholera typhus cartoon

Baron Gábor Kemény

This image is singled out from a series mocking the Hungarian minister of public works and transport, Baron Gábor Kemény. Known as an advocate of Hungarian economic modernization, Kemény seems to be faulted here for raising long-winded written objections to convening the next session of parliament, at a time when cholera was recurring in Hungary. “It is getting on toward autumn,” writes the satirist in his voice. “It would no longer be possible to hold an outdoor session. On the other hand, health conditions, if not frightening, do call for caution. Therefore, instead of giving the appropriate clarifications in person at the session, I will do so in this open letter.” Here even cholera is put off by his stentorian prose.
(Bolond Istók, Budapest, 1886)

Hungarian cholera cartoon

Manners and customs of ye Englyshe in 1849

An amusing illustration in light of our present concerns about physical distancing. But the more so in view of its intentional juxtaposition on the same page with an entry in “Mr. Pips his Diary.” Punch‘s Pepys relates a conversation with a physician on a crowded train in which said physician complains of “the Foulness of London for Want of fit Drainage, and how it do breed Cholera and Typhus, as sure as rotten Cheese do Mites, and of the horrid Folly of making a great Gutter of the River.” Truly, “the Bustle of Railways do destroy all the Dignity of Travelling.”
(Punch, London, 1849)

There are some similarities in this German cartoon from Kladderadatsch (1889).