Opera diva: “Hello? Who’s there? … The secretary? … Good. Tell the director that I’m not performing tonight. The theater is definitely empty and I have such a case of flu that the doctor, who’s with me just now, says I have to take to bed for a while.”
(Der Floh, Vienna, 1899) (See a similar version, albeit with the diva invoking only generic illness, in the Russian magazine Oskolki in 1896.)
Call it influenza, flu, sleeping sickness–
Despite this lovely trinity
Finally, joyous sounds are coming again this year
The good old days of carnival!
(Nebelspalter, Zurich, 1920)
(Der Guckkasten, Munich, 1918)
Physician: “Keep in mind that the influenza is itself not so bad, but it can have very unpleasant aftereffects.”
Patient: “I noticed that when I got your bill, Doctor!”
(Humor/Neues Wiener Journal, Vienna, 1900)
A nearly identical cartoon in Der Floh, Vienna, 1899:
This spare image is fascinating, appearing when an influenza epidemic had prevailed for more than two months in the city of Amsterdam, at a dramatic cost of nearly one in thirty residents every week. The artist, his own medicaments at hand, seems to be contemplating, not so much his own clinical predicament, but how to represent the crisis in visual terms. The self-portrait might represent his interim solution to a dilemma he is not sure how to address satirically. (The irregular Bijvoegsel supplement was most often humorous in content.)
(De Amsterdammer, Amsterdam, 1890)
The stockbroker is seriously ill. His wife is at the bedside and anxiously asks the nurse how high the fever is.
“39.9 Celsius,” says the nurse.
Then the patient whispers: “When you get up to 40 C, sell immediately!”
(Tuulispää, Helsinki, 1929) (Not necessarily flu-related, but plausibly so.)
An uncomfortable reminder of the prevalent anti-Semitism in Vienna at the fin-de-siècle.
Stranger: “For heaven’s sake, does an influenza prevail there or some other kind of epidemic?”
Kikeriki: “Not a trace! This is only coming from our Jewish-Liberals, who are “sniffing” in irritation because they’re never in the parliamentary majority!”
(Kikeriki, Vienna, 1897)
Doctor: “You have the flu? I’ll prescribe you Phenacetin. It the most modern treatment that we have. But do it quickly, before it goes out of fashion.”
(Figaro, Vienna, 1895)
(Bicycle agents directly fill prescriptions by service pharmacists.)
“Do not worry… In the police, we know the ‘prescriptions’!”
(Excelsior, Paris, 1918)
From Le Charivari, Paris, 1848:
View of a pharmacist shop in January 1848. “Each in turn, gentlemen, each in turn.”
“Well, my dear, it is impossible for me to pay you today; I have the flu.”
“Where are your men, lieutenant?”
“My commander, they’ve all gone to bed.”
“Just a few more bottles of my syrup, and I hope you’ll get better.”
At the show. General sneezing across the board.
“Come on, coachman, come on!”
“I can’t go any faster, sir, my horse has the flu.”
A mistress of the house has to eat alone a dinner prepared for forty people. (No doubt punning on “quarantine.”)
Acclimatization of Abd-el-Kader. (Algerian military leader then held captive by the French. Note the clystère in the background, a familiar French theme.)
“Cristi! This time here I am completely taken!”
Cholera does not come to France for fear of catching the flu there.
Doctor: “How is it that you are putting the bed right here in this damp room for curing sausages?”
Farmer’s wife: “But Doctor, you said that the patient has to have a little bit of cheering up!”
(Der Guckkasten, Munich, 1918)
Baroness: “What is it, doctor?”
Doctor: “Influenza!”
Baroness: “Oh my goodness…”
Doctor: “Calm yourself, Madame Baroness! This is the noblest illness there is right now!”
(Figaro, Vienna, 1892)
“My dear little director, how is it that you have cut my fee in half!”
“What do you want? It’s this time of influenza.”
“Well! But what would you say if I only showed one leg?”
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1890)
Brigadier general: “Captain, the company looks terrific! People are getting proper bellies–and without a warm supper!”
Captain: “General, at your command, sir! That stems from influenza body-bandages!”
(Figaro, Vienna, 1891)
“You complain of headache, madame, and you also have some fever. It seems to be a mild case of influenza, a sort of influenza-straggler…”
“You will prove wrong, finest doctor, examine better. I take care to join in a fashion only when it is completely new.”
(Die Bombe, Vienna, 1890)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 