Sarrasqueta in quarantine

A tale from Caras y caretas, Buenos Aires, 1920.

Sarrasqueta, after suffering storms and tribulations, arrives happily at the sight of Buenos Aires, eager to disembark and embrace his friends.

The passengers, who were weak from not eating on schedule, now dedicate themselves to making up for the previous fasting.

And the cramps and pains begin. The Health Department declares the ship infected with a terrible epidemic of influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, toothache, and other scourges..

The choir of doctors orders the passengers to undergo a thorough health inspection and rigorous quarantine. As if counting sheep, they first order the ladies to parade before them at great speed to check their tongues, and to be able to see a thousand an hour.

Then, at a slow trot, the first-class gentlemen and third-class men parade by the doctors. Sarrasqueta is in line with his tongue sticking out from exhaustion and pale with emotion.

The doctor, seeing him pale and with a white tongue, stops him, declaring him unclean. Sarrasqueta accedes, but claims it is from having eaten meringues for dessert.

The doctor takes his temperature. Sarrasqueta asks him not to tickle him with the thermometer, because he’ll be laughing for the whole year.

They tell him that they are going to give him a vaccine against flu, scabies, and rabies. Sarrasqueta defends himself by saying that he is neither a test body, nor a guinea pig.

They order his gothic curls to be shaved off with the clipper, perhaps so that no one takes his hair.

A public health employee arrives, not very clean, and with a fogger for killing ants he fumigates Sarrasqueta from head to toe.

They put the luggage in the disinfection oven, and they return it to him burnt to a crisp. And then they condemn him to undergo days of quarantine until they see the result of the vaccine.

Today

Smith’s Weekly, Sydney, 1949

The patriotic seesaw

An early cartoon condemning the atheism and hostility to the aristocracy manifest in the French Revolution. “If all this is so, as we unfortunately could not call into doubt, plague, war, and famine are much less formidable than the plague known today in all of Europe under the name of French disease. Those attack only the current generation, this one [i.e., Revolution] tends to rot its way down to our last heirs. The author of the cartoon is therefore right to say in this sense that it is clear that the new regime is tipping the balance.”
(Jacque-Marie Boyer-Brun, Histoire des caricatures de la révolte des Français, Paris, 1792)

The scholar’s bride

“I am so glad to see you again, dear Bertha!… When will you get married, where are you going for your honeymoon?”
“My bridegroom is still wavering. You know he’s an avid bacteriologist. We are going either to East Asia or to Africa. He can just as well study plague in Mukden or sleeping sickness in the Congo… Which would you prefer?”
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1911) (See also this French version.)

First session of the Imperial Health Ministry

… for consultation about the means for preventing the introduction of the plague.
Das Narrenschiff (Munich, 1877)

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)

The plague in China

Russian: “Now, Chinaman, can’t you be done with the plague?”
Chinese: “No, I see the plague and you, and those are two ailments that one cannot easily get rid of .”
(Wiener Caricaturen, Vienna, 1911)

At the Indo-Chinese border

Plague, to the Prussian crown prince: “Back to Berlin! And bow to your papa, the old chatterbox, and tell him that I will be there in the spring.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1911)
(Crown prince Wilhelm, though lacking in foreign diplomatic experience, won approval to embark on a lengthy journey to Asia in November 1910, ostensibly to learn more about German interests in the far east. After much wining and dining with British colonial officials in India, Wilhelm cut short his trip late in February 1911. Originally slated to include Siam, Dutch Indonesia, China, and Japan, it was interrupted by news of an outbreak of plague in Calcutta, as well as reports of bouts in China that were already crossing the Russian border.)

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)

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)

The plague

This is a visually striking cartoon by Heinz Stieger, but I think the epidemic metaphor is overworked, encompassing a host of modern ills, so to speak. With the passage of time, folding AIDS into a plague metaphor should also sit less comfortably with us.
(Nebelspalter, Zurich, 1987)

The seven plagues of Egypt

Two panels of six. The other plagues listed are the asphalt inferno of cars in Rio, water shortages, food prices, and the endless riots of republicans and monarchists.

The bubonic plague. Terrible illness that intends to occupy the space formerly occupied by yellow fever.
With the great public health surveys that have been carried out, and the great preventive efforts that have gained universal fame, this terrible visitation that is breaking out in so many points of the city is surprising.

The dust. A true gift from the Greek who forced us into the City Hall with its ground-sand paving!
It is a delight to breathe this myriad of microbes that roam in the air, stimulated by automobiles and trams!

Communicated by the breath

“It seems that the plague is communicated by the breath… well, here, I would only have to blow on you like that… poof!… you would have it.”
(Le Journal amusant, Paris, 1911)