Category: typhus

Regarding the Polish victories over the Bolsheviks

More propaganda than cartoon, this image was published during the Polish-Soviet war of 1920: “Rejoice, Europe! It’s true that because of the Polish victories you have missed the deliveries of tea and caviar, but you have also avoided the visitation of the four Russian witches: anarchy, plague, cholera, and typhus.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1920)

Polish plague cholera typhus cartoon

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)

Bummelzug

Such a marvelous idiom: Bummelzug, “boomelzoog,” the slow train that stops at every last station along the way. Here a pitiful little provincial station with terrible facilities posts a sign, “Please keep clean.” The caption then reads: “Important rule in the battle against epidemic diseases (salmonella, typhus, dysentery): Thorough hand-washing after every visit to the restroom!” Which prompts the rhyme (in German):

Whoever wants to comply with this rule,
He’ll never be traveling on slow trains!

Draw appropriate hygienic conclusions.
(Nebelspalter, Zurich, 1966)

Swiss hygiene cartoon

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

Russian secret police

In 1908 a typhus epidemic began spreading from the northern Caucasus and southern Russia to the more densely populated northwestern districts of the Romanov Empire. By and large the epidemic failed to reach further west in Europe, but that did not prevent the German magazine Simplicissimus from offering this curious variant of the classic trope of disease as invasive agent.
(Simplicissimus no. 24, 1909)

German typhus cartoon

Epidemic didacticism

“A filthy man is a hotbed of lice and fleas. Lice transmit the typhus contagion and relapsing fever, and fleas infect us with smallpox and plague.” (Ukrainian People’s Commissariat of Health, 1920) A pity that Soviet didacticism in service to public health still managed to send mixed messages about class. (Russian State Library)

Soviet public health poster