Cholera!

A multi-panel narrative by Mecachis (the pen name of Eduardo S. Hermua) in La Semana Cómico, Barcelona, 1890.

What many believe it to be

What it is in actuality.

Of course, between what is said and what is feared, there are people who find cases even in the soup;

so that, as a consequence, certain sites are extremely crowded

and that with such plausible motive, there are establishments that make their August [profit].

and doctors whom the epidemic thoroughly suits.

“Believe me: this cholera is nothing. Do you feel a little wooziness? Call the doctor. Headache? Call the doctor. Cramps or sweats? Always to the doctor.”
“And what are you?”
“A doctor, to serve you.”

The big prescription you can’t get [rest, the good life, good nutrition, etc.].

Final result of the epidemic: For the authorities: A shipment of large crosses

For the doctors. For the patients.

In sum: Nothing left

In ruins and misrule

Spain from the Pyrenees on down
I contemplate what an inferno
In ruins and misrule
And this is what suits me
I enter if the Squint-eye lets me
To give good testimony
That the Cholera and Don Antonio [Cánovas del Costillo, prime minister who was forced from office by the end of that year]
Are coming to be one and the same.
(Don Quijote, Madrid, 1892)

Is it the monster?

Cholera: “Is the monster in?”
Porter: “Do come in, your delay is strange.”
Cholera: “While he governs Spain, you don’t need me, nor shall you.”
(Don Quijote, Madrid, 1892)
(Prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was sometimes referred to as “el Monstruo,” as seen in this image from El Motin.)

Busy square

(Sewers belching miasma)
Boy: “It seems to me that you have made the trip in vain, friend Cholera; here we already have an absolute lack of hygiene, dreadful misery, and in case something was missing, we have [prime minister José] Canalejas with his democratic squad. What will be left for you?”
(El Fusil, Madrid, 1911)

The cholera in government

Minister: “What did you want to settle in Spain with?… It cannot be, my friend; emergency scenarios are already covered. Wherever there is [prime minister José] Canalejas with his disturbances and [Liberal Party politician and member of the Council of Ministers Eduardo] Cobián with his [tax reform] projects, there is no need for cholera at all.”
(El Fusil, Madrid, 1910)

A mighty battle is preparing for you

Plague to cholera: “You have something else to do, but what will we, typhus and I, do without war?”
Cholera: “Here’s some advice. Rush to the Yellow Sea, there is already a mighty battle preparing for you.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1913)

Anglo-Saxon trade with Germans

For clothing, food, and gum — cholera and plague in return.
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1947)

Matched pairs

They glide in festive dance, for it is carnival,
Towards the gates of Warsaw
Plague with hunger, dirt with cholera,
For better entertainment.
And out of hospitality the Siren
Is inviting these couples
To ask cities for help with hygiene
And take them for bars.
Ha! what to do? This Siren
Is in a quarrel with hygiene,
No wonder she wants to show off
Luck as hospitality.
(Kogut, Warsaw, 1911) (translation wants improvement)

Two respectable ladies

Two respectable ladies: Plague and Cholera, congratulating themselves on the New Year, gave their word of honor to the world that each would not leave it so quickly, because, as it has been said, “he is at his best, who has not even been born or has died on time.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1912)

A victim of hygiene

(in Latin) He wants to avoid falling into Scylla or Charybdis,
or:
Unless a guideline is set soon for the massive increase in cholera-prevention remedies, the first victim of hygiene will not be long in coming.
(Kladderadatsch, Berlin, 1884)

Miss Maliczewska

Gabriela Zapolska (b. 1857) was an actor and prolific playwright whose Miss Maliczewska enjoyed its premier while she was living in Lwów in 1910. Drawn in part on her itinerant life as an aspiring actor after breaking from her gentry family, the play was a conventional moral tale about an impoverished and beautiful young woman named Stefka Maliczewska seeking an acting career, but falling under the malign influence of the lecherous old lawyer Daum, who becomes her patron. After various betrayals, ethical compromises, and debt-ridden dilemmas, the play ends with Stefka stymied and cursing her lot in life. (Her term of choice was “psia krew!” intimating dog’s blood but meaning “damn!”) Though not exactly scandalous in 1910, with one reviewer welcoming the “merciless truth” of her Zolaesque naturalism, such unrefined language from the mouth of a young female character did invite disapproval in some circles, which in turn drew the attention of the satirist.

The caption: “I will write a play for the [female] director so that she lets Maliczewska abscond!”
“Quite the contrary, my dear, I am afraid that you will do something completely different?”
“Let the director be at ease, my play will end not on ‘damn’ but on ‘cholera!'”

In keeping with its old-fashioned “choleric” association with anger, “cholera” is sometimes employed as a curse (roughly, “damn”). At a time when the last cholera pandemic was gradually coming to an end, this trivial pun would have been especially resonant.

(Kolce, Warsaw, 1911)

Nudge to the netherworld

Plague: “What will happen with us now, because I would also like to nudge him a bit to the netherworld.”
Cholera: “Don’t feel sorry for yourself, get to it! A huge and sleepy peasant, enough for both of us.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1910, p. 4)

Cholera-safe aldermen’s chairs

The firm Angstmeier & Co. holds a patent for cholera-safe aldermen’s chairs that will shortly be purchased by the city fathers in Augsburg, Peine, Ballenstedt, Altruppin, and in other locales.
(Kladderadatsch, Berlin, 1892) (Note the familiar clystère theme.)

A nice fraternal gift

“Won’t you permit me, dear brothers from across the Vistula, a little cholera?”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1908)

Some rhyming couplets on the same page offer counsels for Warsaw residents during a cholera epidemic:

Whoever doesn’t want to be infected with the cholera bacillus,
Let him not remember that there is martial law.

In these choleric times things are not headed in a healthy direction
Think about Filevich or Menshikov. [Russian monarchists hostile to Polish separatist sentiments]

The best epidemic fostered among humans,
Where people get irritated by what Rossiya writes. [monarchist newspaper]

Don’t worry about the Swabs in Łódź either,
For you will definitely grab the spare hospital.

The nicest thought is still that whether you are a Belgian or a Turk,
And you will be healthy, even though you ate a raw cucumber.

For the worst thought in the world is
That you bear the heavy lot of the Pole on your neck.

The cholera suspect

(Kladderadatsch, Berlin, 1892)