News

“Hey! Rifleman, I’d like to join your superb corps, everybody there is armored against the Cholera.”
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1865)

The doctors of the country

The Country: “So many doctors, and so many remedies! And to think that just a little more bread would suffice!…”
(L’Asino, Rome, 1909) (A straightforward politics-as-pathology metaphor that I include only because of the ongoing clystère theme.)

The god of priests and his justice

“And now, Almighty, where must we strike!”
“As usual, wherever more people who worship me are.”
(L’Asino, Rome, 1909)

The heroes of the day

The city ordinance councilor and the public health official at work.
“United in life and in death!”
(Pss… Pss…, Bari, 1910)

In times of cholera

“Hallo, isn’t that your wife going for a walk with her cousin again, and you say nothing?”
“No, I heard that in times of cholera you shouldn’t change any habits.”
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1865)

Timorous hunters

Game pretending to have cholera to get rid of timorous hunters.
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1865)

When Bavarian authorities forbade rabbit hunting during the 1892 epidemic, Kladderadatsch published a similar cartoon.

Sketch

“You’re afraid of cholera? Manners, my dear. You have the quarantine to preserve you.”
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1865)

Peace soup

Mother Europe: “I could be eating the soup—even if it’s also over-salted—just fine, and now this impudent fellow is constantly spitting in it!”
(Nebelspalter, Zurich, 1919) (It turns out this is not a new theme. Compare this version of “peace soup” from 1905 and this one from 1907.)

Memento mori

(St. Petersburg, 1,500,000 residents)
Cholera: “Couldn’t I reduce this number by one zero?…”
(Satirikon, St. Petersburg, 1909)

Reliable protector

(News reports that foreigners are projecting they will have to interfere in Russian public health arrangements.)
St. Petersburg leaders: “Dear Cholera! Only you can protect me from foreign interference!!!”(Satirikon, St. Petersburg, 1910)

Popular championship

Referee: “So far the following fighters have signed up for the fight with the Russian human in today’s international championship: Plague—champion of India, Cholera—champion of Asia, Red Rooster [implying fires of rebellion]—champion of Russia, and Double Vinegar—champion of Petersburg!!!”
(Satirikon, St. Petersburg, 1910)

Summery

“Hey, everyman, turn around! It is I, the Caucasian plague, who is coming to you!!”
“And I, the Balkan, going to war again!”
“And I, the Chinese, approaching your border…”
Summer everyman: “Damn it, damn the newspaper … Ach, it’s so pale and plump!”
(Novyi Satirikon, St. Petersburg, 1914)

The troika

Here is the dashing troika tearing down the high road
Three old witches howling, barking, shaking their shaggy heads:
Plague, reaction, cholera, but it is hunger (malnutrition) that holds the reins…
“All measures have been taken,” however…
The people should not be agitated…
(Pulemet, St. Petersburg, 1906)

Dr. Zebulon Tallérossy

During his microscopic studies Dr. Zebulon Tallérossy renders which princely encounters will become the… eastern plague? (A noble landowner, Tallérossy was the humorous literary invention of Mór Jókai. Clearly I will need to parse this image further…)
(Az Üstökös, Budapest, 1880) (Cf. this 1873 “letter” of Tallérossy.)

Good health!

(The Theresatown Ghetto. Toward the public health statistics of Fodor-style Arcadia.) “This is the Pest from which the plague (pestis) heads for Asia!”
(Bolond Istók, Budapest, 1882)