(Detail from “Salad of the Week”) “Discussions and opinions on the hygienic inspection of schools continue; but, like all the serious assumptions of this country, they never go beyond the theoretical and verbose terrain, and it is likely that this will also be seen now… How many adjuncts, teachers and students do not drag an existence already reached by tuberculosis, living in a criminal promiscuity!… Why not take an energetic decision to avoid a greater harm?”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1911)
(The press is discussing whether a new invasion of mosquitoes could lead to a recurrence of yellow fever.)
(Cloud of mosquitoes labeled “yellow fever,” “purple,” “green,” “blue,” “etc.”)
City of Rio: “Go away, long-legged bandits! Go away, damn vehicles of fevers of all colors! Go away!”
Dr. Seidl: “Don’t be so scared, madame! Here I am armed to the teeth against this horde of mosquitoes!”
Joe Public: “Hey, doc, the lady is right! You can have a lot of strength and a lot of goodwill, but… a swallow just doesn’t make summer! Against this cloud, which darkens the air and appears over our heads, I see only one remedy: the replacement of the strategic killer-mosquito brigade. Are there not so many others here? Because this is useful!…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1912)
“Who is this? Cholera?! Go around through the back door… You and your ilk are not allowed through the front!”
(Satirikon, St. Petersburg, 1908)
These two cartoons were published in quick succession as the cholera epidemic worsened in 1892, first in May in Germany, then in July in Hungary. Note what the Hungarian version leaves out, though it is nearly a copy of the German original.
Mars & Co. Arms Dealers: “Darn it! Nothing is moving off the shelves, all my customers are leaving me in the lurch. It’s simply because of these accursed city travelers who are ruining a perfectly solid retail enterprise with their running around.”
(Kladderadatsch, Berlin, 1892)
Mars & Co. Arms Dealers: “Well, I declare! My wares are rusting around my neck, old customers are staying away, but these peddlers in mourning clothes come and ruin the old solid business!”
(Borsszem Jankó, Budapest, 1892)
“No one can warm up the room better in this cold than I can!”
(Nebelspalter, Zurich, 1929)
Suspicious cases.
(La Esquella de la torratxa, Barcelona, 1884)
Chief of prevention: “Let’s put a lid on this thing! This, with the addition of rainwater, becomes a site for larvae that, after their biological evolution, become yellow-fever-bearing mosquitos transmitting jaundice-related typhus.”
Municipal worker: “So this lady of yours is very much mistaken. This here is a hole.”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1929)
(Employing a polite version of the caption.) (The captain of a steamship from Bahia has died of yellow fever. The captain’s wife is quarantined at a local hospital. These facts greatly impressed the public spirit, which was startled by the threat of the invasion of yellow evil.)
Yellow fever: “Make yourself comfortable! This is the paradise of professional freedom!…”
Joe Public (small lecture to officials culminating in:) “Come on, gentlemen! A little energy, against the greatest enemy of our land!”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1912)
“What a marvelous thing! Three young Hungarian medical scientists have discovered a new bacterium! The famine-typhus bacterium!”
“How can you be happy about this!? Aren’t there already enough bacteria!?”
(Kakas Marton, Budapest, 1908)
“Are you supposed to give up your candidacy? What happened?”
“But they summoned me to the medical department, if I have any scruples, now they want me to get down in the mud when the cholera is frightening us…” (Meaning, you can get dirty in politics or in fighting an epidemic, but not both at the same time? This wants improvement.)
(Humoristické listy, Prague, 1913)
Though it has come to sound a little old-fashioned in English, it is still possible to refer to the flu as “grippe.” This Argentine cartoon is punning relentlessly on the senses of “grip” (e.g., inverting “in the grip of panic” in the title) and I will surely mistake some of the participles, but let’s give it a try.
“All the press is propagating the notion that the grippe is a bad thing. “With this I have a pretext to fail at my post.” For this reason the pharmacist is gaining a fortune. The man at Medical Aid takes advantage of the emergency to show off his great science. Chorus of doctors: according to all the symptoms that it can present, the grippe is a minor thing or it can be aggravated. Anyone who is employed has, of course, been “in the grip.” “I want to get a grip on myself, but it is in vain, I am not “grippy,” nor am I “gripping,” nor am I a “gripper.” Only the poor cartoonist is the constant victim of the general contagion, and works at all times, whether he is well or he is ill.”
(Caras y Caretas, Buenos Aires, 1918)
Provisional.
Stable.
(Kikeriki, Vienna, 1892)
An adjacent story lists the epidemic illnesses then prevailing in the city: street-paving-disease; city-theater-Sunday-afternoon-performance-fever; stock-market-congestion with migraine effects and scenery-typhus; general-intestinal-contraction among small business as a consequence of great virulence of intermittent brokeness; prizewinning-Danube-dropsy; robbery-fear in the watchmaker association; acute tram-crowding; catalepsy of the greater Vienna roadworks commission; food-marasmus; cholera-comma-bacillus-mania.
“Say, Mr. Cholera, do you listen to Western radio?”
“No.”
“Well, then, how do you want to infect yourself?”
(Pesti Izé, Budapest, 1948)
Boy: “I say, Tommy, I’m blow’d if there isn’t a man a turning on the cholera.”
(Punch, London, 1849)
The cause of the epidemic was found to be in poor food. The specter of evil lives there at the point of sale, where the customer is only a question of money and not the belly.
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1912)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 