(Only an indirect connection to pandemics, but the section of the soccer stadium reserved for those suspected of typhus speaks to the social status theme.)
The respectable public: “Beast! Scoundrel! Assassin! Agrarian! Moron!”
The naive spectator: “Well now, this must be that striker they say has such a reputation!”
(Buen Humor, Madrid, 1931)
From the pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier in Brussels: “If God allows the germs of a contagious disease to spread among your ranks, the most glorious prospects are destroyed for the moment. Therefore, above all, place your trust in God.”
(Ulk, Berlin, 1916) (How’s that for an odd bit of wartime propaganda?)
(sign labeled “Landfill”)
“The fountainhead is leaking, don’t look at that, turn your eyes somewhere else, turn your eyes somewhere else.”
(Tuulispää, Helsinki, 1907)
Doctor: “You called for me? Tell me what you’re feeling.”
Merchant’s wife: “Thank God I’m healthy for now, but I’m taking ill immediately, because I had a bad dream today. An acquaintance of mine, Pulkheria Ivanovna, also had a terrible dream before she took ill with typhus…”
Doctor: “In that case it was premature to summon me.”
Merchant’s wife: “Oh, doctor, you’ll anticipate this sickness and start to cure me now, while I haven’t taken ill, otherwise I’ll die of fright!”
(Strekoza, St. Petersburg, 1878)
Typhus: “What is it, darling sister, are you going away?”
Cholera: “Brother, I did not expect such a reception: no one was afraid of me, and they are even dogging me at every step. You can’t show your face anywhere: either I’ll run up against vitriol, or the Zhdanov brothers [purveyors of a sulphuric deodorant concoction since the 1840s; “Zhdanov liquid” was indeed tested for its effects on cholera and typhus in 1893]. But there was a time when I wasn’t greeted like this: I was given lots of leeway.”
Typhus: “And as for me, they don’t pay attention, sister: I have taken root here!”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1866)
(This image is accompanied by a lengthy poem for pandemic times; just a few phrases here.)
Oh, maiden, the power of your beauty
Has kindled me so powerfully
That my body temperature
Is so high as only with typhus;
It increases to 40,5,
My pulse beats as never before,
One hundred beats per minute,
That is how much feeling you arouse in me.
….
Oh, most beautiful, see my fever!
You are its antiphlogisticum,
My hydropathic foment,
Known for working eminently.
Let’s be allopaths here,
Be ice and cool my pain,
Yet when kissing I’ll say later:
Similia similibus.
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1870)
One of the pictures of starving typhus in the Russian countryside.
(Ersh, Tomsk, 1907)
(A farmer woman wants to visit her son in prison.) Prison warden: “I’m sorry I can’t accommodate your wish, dear lady, two days ago the typhus broke out here.”
Farmer woman: “Oh for God’s sake, how is that possible, how could he have gotten out of there?”
(Some untranslatable wordplay here, with the farmer woman confusing “typhus” [Typhus] and “type” [Typus], as in, “the type of guy who would try to break out of prison.”)
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1873)
“Here you go, my dear, oysters from the doctor, with best wishes for a good… typhoid fever.”
(Le Rire, Paris, 1903)
Death loves a shining mark.
(Puck, New York, 1900)
(From newspapers.) People’s Welfare Minister Rudevics has raised the issue of disinfecting incoming items in order to protect officials.
Woman: “If you don’t mind: from the countryside with a petition?! First of all, present a certificate that you’ve had a bath; then a certificate that you have been vaccinated against smallpox, typhus, cholera, tuberculosis, or rhinitis, then a document that your family is not insane; then a covering letter disinfecting the petition; then …”
Petitioner: “Then I better wait and bring a certificate that I am dead and buried!…”
(Svari, Riga, 1927)
“But don’t you know that you can’t come in here with a short haircut?”
“I can if I’ve had typhus.”
(Buen Humor, Madrid, 1926)
Continuing our clystère theme, a few verses from Le Monde comique (Paris, 1869).
In a provincial town
I am an established pharmacist.
I drink, I eat, and, like a prince,
I have fun doing nothing.
It’s my boy who manipulates [the clystère],
And my students are charged
With getting the pill swallowed
In customers who are upset.
Alas! my little selfishness
For others dreams of typhus,
Coryza, fever, rheumatism,
Measles and cholera morbus.
I am not afraid of the epidemic,
Because, if I carry on without remorse,
I know the pharmacy too well
To make one [an epidemic?] of my body.
“Improved six-barreled flea-thrower with a refuting double-barreled trailer.”
Ballistic cannisters labeled “plague,” “typhus,” “cholera.”
(American Secretary of State Dean Acheson and UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie are doing the refuting.)
(Krokodil, Moscow, 1952)
“This is outrageous! It’s reached forty degrees!”
“Don’t be surprised; it’s the typhoid fever.”
(El Mentidero, Madrid, 1915)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 