The iconic Oswaldo Cruz

I lack the Portuguese knowledge to translate all these cartoons in full, but in this post I just want to highlight the iconic status of bacteriologist and public health leader Oswaldo Cruz (1872-1917). For an avowedly secular publication like O Malho, Cruz as the standard-bearer of modern medicine clearly exerted tremendous appeal, though of course its satire often drew attention to the many obstacles in the way of achieving his aims.
(Each image links to the appropriate issue.)

Vaccine-mandate war!… (1904)

The journey of the mosquito czar. Reception in Victoria (1905)

Journey of the mosquito czar — arrival in Bahia (1905)

Essential cleaning (1907)

One more broom… (1907)

Cruz in provincial Pará (1910)

In Pará: Mosquito plague does not kill Governor Coelho (1911)

Federal intervention in Ceara (1914)

At the Pharoux Quay: The messiah of consumption (1908)

The great magician… of coincidences

Roping it in time (1908)

The challenge of tuberculosis (1906)

Plagues on the go (1907)

See also this multi-panel cartoon from 1905. And another from 1908. And a marvelous color cartoon from 1907. And this vaccination cartoon from 1904. Ditto.

Wrong account (comic scene in 2 panels)

Public health physician writing official order that no more than three persons can live in this room: “But how can we fight tuberculosis if there is no housing, if poor people live piled up together?!… Carry out the orders at last! This room only has space for three people… Write!”

A tenant next door to the crowded room: “Hey, doc! I saw that sign you made and I’m telling you that your account is wrong! This room is the same size as that one, and all the people you see live here: me, my wife, my six–nearly seven–children, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, and…
Physician: “What! Even more people?”
Tenant: “… and inside, Doctor, I still have a painting with the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity!”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1907)

Discretion… that’s the danger!

Regarding mortuary statistics and the pursuit of official hygiene toward plague, yellow fever, smallpox, scarlet fever and croup:
Syphilis: “The public health fight against our illustrious colleagues continues over there…”
Tuberculosis: “And in the meantime (coughing), we are very comfortable here (coughing)… There is nothing (coughing) like doing the job by the sidewalk… (coughing). We arrange more casualties annually (coughing) than all boisterous ailments together (coughing) and we are not uncomfortable…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1914)

The microbes vanquished by a new Saint George

From an advertisement for a potion produced by Guyot: “Everyone knows that bad microbes are the cause of almost all of our major diseases: tuberculosis, influenza, diphtheria, typhoid fever, meningitis, cholera, plague, tetanus, etc.” (Am I the only one who sees some Miró here?)
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1919)

Social misery transcended

A physician injecting small quantities of meat extract: “Since we can now inoculate away via its own poison, not only smallpox, but also cholera, typhus, consumption, brain inflammation, in short, all bad diseases, we simply proceed in the same manner with hunger, thirst, and lack of money, inoculate it away via the corresponding medium and — who would deny it? — the social question is solved.”
(Nebelspalter, Zurich, 1885)

Swiss cholera smallpox tuberculosis typhus cartoon

To each his own understanding

A sickly-looking man enters a bookstore and asks: “Is it here that you sell those stamps that are so good against tuberculosis?”
My colleague Riikkamari Muhonen explains that for much of the twentieth century special charity stamps known as “tuberculosis stamps” were sold around Christmas, and the money raised was used to research cures for tuberculosis and to build special homes for consumptive families.
(Tuulispää, Helsinski, 1911)

Father Thames

Father Thames introducing his offspring to the fair city of London: diphtheria, scrofula, cholera.
(Punch, London, 1858)

The struggle against tuberculosis

Spitting is not permitted!

Cooking asphalt! Demolishing houses!
Beating carpets! Driving a car!
Dragging a train! Chimney cleaning!
Street sweeping! Barrel carting!
Dust! Fumes! Pestilence! Bacteria!
Rust! Microbes! Smoking at the break!
Loading coal! Carting away manure!
But — spitting is not permitted!
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1908)

A victim of popular lectures

Professor: “… It is not rare for diseases to exist in the human body which go entirely unmarked for years at a time.”
(after the lecture)
“Why are you so quiet today, dear Flora?”
“Oh, dear Mama, I will die soon, I just know it, I have consumption!”
“But why would you get such a strange idea, you’ve never complained about any pains!”
Flora (crying): “That’s just it, I don’t feel anything at all!”
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1873)

Taking the Arcadian cure

Detail of poster by Fyodor Zakarov for the All-Russian League for the Struggle with Tuberculosis, 1914.
(Russian State Library)

The German god

“Always with God!” Note the conflation of poison gas with spreading bacterial contagion. The man is carrying inflammable liquid along with cholera, tuberculosis, and typhus “confetti.”
(L’Asino, Rome, 1918)