Mandatory vaccine

“How old do you think I am, Gedeón?”
“You bear it on your arm. Six shots… thirty-six years old! And pardon me for saying so.”
(Gedeón, Madrid, 1909)

Things that don’t exist

“So you think that only the lack of vaccine is what causes the smallpox epidemic to explode, grow, and worsen? What! There is also a lack of cleanliness in the city. Have you noticed how the streets are, from Campo de Santa Anna upwards? It is dust, garbage, and stagnant water everywhere… I have never seen such mediocre service. At this point we’ve been walking backwards like the crab!…”
“And City Hall?”
“What City Hall?! …”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1908)

The smallpox statute

“There’s a statute from the Ministry of the Little People that’s just come out.”
“Has it really? What luck! And what is it?”
“We no longer have to be vaccinated if we don’t want to; from now on we can get smallpox undisturbed…”
(De ware Jacob, Rotterdam, 1903)

The epidemics

Yellow fever, plague, and smallpox stand arrayed in chorus against public health in the person of Oswaldo Cruz, the biologist and government official most closely identified with Brazil’s efforts to introduce obligatory vaccination.
(choir in the background) “If it weren’t for you getting in the way of our sinister steps, what a good harvest we would have made during the visit of the American fleet!”
(Revista da Semana, Rio de Janeiro, 1908) (Compare Oswaldo Cruz’s iconic status in O Malho.)

Six-week holiday

“Where is the Counsellor going then?”
“Well, he was vaccinated against smallpox and for the sake of better recuperation he is just starting a six-week holiday…”
(Humoristické listy, Prague, 1915)

All in the family

“How is father?”
“Not great, his hand hurts.”
“And Mom?”
“Really bad, her leg hurts.”
“At least you are well?”
“Oh, no, and something hurts. Because you see, our whole family got vaccinated for smallpox, it’s just that it was every person in a different place on the body.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1900)

Vaccination in the seraglio

The Sultan’s harem must be vaccinated
and thus preserved against the smallpox.
A sultana with a lush bosom
extends her snow-white, round arm.
Small odalisques, slightly pretentious,
with lingerie and graceful,
how easily they hover behind a screen.
However it is bandaged and vaccinated,
the seraglio must not be profaned.
No, sultana, beware,
for behold, the eunuch is on his guard!
And as vigilant as the dragons of fairy tales,
the Grand Sultan himself guards his treasure.
For the slightest tilt, oh, odalisque,
you can easily run a dangerous risk.
The “life doctor” can only see the arm,
but no sign of décolletage.
Otherwise a prisoner (no, what befalls?)
a silk cord around his neck.
Now the vaccination is over,
with the “sick man” on the imperial throne,
in purple cloak and ermine,
he does not recover from his vaccine.
(Fäderneslandet, Stockholm, 1887)

The smallpox tragedy in two pictures

(A scene in the Chamber)
Brazilian parliamentary deputy, military officer, and sometime ally of the Church of Positivism Alexandre José Barbosa Lima: “Look, Mr. President! Our brothers, our wives, our children, fouled by vaccine, demoted to the role of guinea pigs! Misery! Protest! In the name of Comte, I positively must protest for all the juntas!” [“Junta” might simply mean “committee,” but Barbosa Lima ended up supporting the oligarchical politics which the Positivists had opposed.]

(Street scene, the cemetery entrance)
Barbosa Lima: “Behold, the victims of a black epidemic arrive. There are so many! Finally, as the dead govern the living, it is always a comfort to be sure that we have many people to govern us…
Peace to the dead! My sect [the Church of Positivism] is against the vaccine… and I find myself respectful of the consequences of its dogmas. Health and fraternity, oh! The dead are passing!”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1904)
For more on the complicated politics of Positivist opposition to compulsory vaccination, see Robert Nachman.

Soccer at the smallpox “field”

Director of the Department of Public Health Oswaldo Cruz (wearing Public Health sash): “The vaccine kills the pigskins! It’s written in our books, it’s a proven fact! The goal of your positivism and your science in…”
Mathematician, philosopher, and vaccination opponent Raimundo Teixeira Mendes (wearing Positivist sash): “The goal is yours, you slob! I’ll prove to you by A + B how it’s me who’s with the good of humanity!…”
Joe Public: “Yes! keep arguing! Pick a fight about whether the line of the “footballer” is making your goals [victims], and fairly. In this three-month “match” there are already 2,432…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1908)

Are you that afraid of those diseases?

“Last week I was vaccinated against smallpox, today I’m going to be treated against typhus, then against cholera–“
“Are you that afraid of those diseases?”
“Oh, that’s not it. But we have a single young doctor…”
(Humoristické listy, Prague, 1915)

Speculating with the life of the people

Newspaper reports: The director of Public Health and the director of the Vaccination Institute are engaged in the struggle to supply vaccines.
Hygienist Dr. Carlos Seidl: “Your Excellency, Your Excellency, don’t disturb me in the smallpox war! Just provide vaccine…”
Baron de Pedro Affonso: “Dr. Seidl, Dr. Seidl, don’t get involved in my business!”
Rivadavia [uncertain who this figure is, unless it is historical metonymy for Argentina, which handled vaccination differently?]: “That’s right, Joe! Everything is out of joint! There shouldn’t be a fight when smallpox is threatening…”
Joe Public: “What do you want? They gave His Excellency the vaccine monopoly… They put the vaccine up for negotiation…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1913)

Only those who want smallpox!

Joe Public: “Just look at what is foresight and what is ignorance! All who vaccinate and revaccinate are clean and healthy against the black plague! All those who do not vaccinate themselves, out of ignorance, through negligence, or simply a spirit of opposition, or are marked for life or go dragging that sucker to the netherworld! Only those who have smallpox and want to die of it; that is, anyone who does not get vaccinated!”
Smallpox: “Shut up, wretch! Do not tell these truths! Do not harm my death harvest!”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1914) (shaky on the idiom)

Passing quarantine grounds

Affected Swell: “Aw–I say–Mr. Jones–did you evah see the horwid small pawks?”
Jones (funny man): “Oh! Yes–had one for dinner on Sunday–sucking pigs, you know, we call’ em.”
(Swell collapses)
(Sydney Punch, 1881)

The smallpox scare

How it originated in Sydney.
A story of putridoxcinnation.
(Truth, Brisbane, 1913) (Follow the link for the extended verses that accompany this; I include a couple below.)

In our Southern clime, in a healthy time, when trade was slack with the coffin-makers,
When the hearses’ teams chewed their oats in dreams, and a lifeless trade was the undertakers’,
Came a grisly pair labeled ‘Death’ and ‘Scare’–for the visit the last bedmakers thanked ’em–
And settled them down for a time in town, in a crazy Sydney doctor’s sanctum.
……….
What was left of the scare was a small affair not calling for further consideration–
There was no smallpox. IT WAS PUTRID OX that menaced Old Sydney with decimation.

That boat!

In 1881 Sydney, Australia, suffered a smallpox epidemic whose earliest infections likely stemmed from China, with the authorities once again resorting to strict quarantine. In this cartoon the nervousness about harbor connections to ships quarantined offshore invited a play on a Gilbert & Sullivan ditty.
(Sydney Punch, 1881)