The passengers of the Araguaya and the quarantine on Grand Island.
For third-class passengers, poor and unhappy people: washing, disinfection, grooming, tongue examination, eye testing, clothes spread out to dry, isolation… hell!
For first-class passengers: all the perks, permission to “escape” to Rio, gestures of appreciation with oil portrait, steel-drum music and quintets for the blind…
Nothing like having money: even the tips of the syringes are soft…
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1910)
Lower-deck passengers from Austria [the Habsburg Empire] who embarked from a Hamburg steamer are medically examined to prevent the introduction of diphtheria.
(Das interessante Blatt, Vienna, 1883)
(Commenting on disputes among the Brazilian states about how to deal with cholera, then raging in Europe.)
Cholera: “Ah! That’s it? Now that you remember to close the door to Rio de Janeiro in my face? Well, wait for it to come back! I enter from the north, whose doors are always open, thanks to the kindness of the respective governments!
Whoever wants to get rid of me has to defend himself very well, in a timely fashion… Move along! …”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1910)
Dr. Oswaldo Cruz [Brazil’s pioneering bacteriologist, who had recently left the public health service]: “Hello! … I already dealt with you in the war…”
The Typhus: “Whaddaya mean, doc! After you left the Hygiene Department, sir, I was no longer the master of leaving Rio de Janeiro!
I’ve been working for the donkey… Now I’m operating at the Botanical Garden; but I still have a lot to do in other neighborhoods! …”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1916) (I surely require correction with the idioms here.)
“If you don’t listen to my advice, you will never get over typhus…”
“Doctor, I don’t want to get over typhus, just for typhus to get over me.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1891)
“Is it true, miss, that typhus is contagious?”
“Yes… But it infects only those who have a tendency for it.”
“And that’s again not so dangerous, because who, miss, would want a tendency for typhus.”
(Kogut, Warsaw, 1912)
“We’re reasoning to that gentleman about such terrible things as cholera in Naples, and that fool there is listening and constantly laughing.”
“Give it a rest, that is no fool, he is a life insurance company agent.” (No bonus points for noticing the anti-Semitic caricature.)
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1884)
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)
(It has been widely commented that Marshal Hermes [de Fonseca, the president of Brazil] did not go to Italy.)
Italian King Victor Emmanuel (holding document behind his back that reads “Italian emigration to Brazil is prohibited”): “Hey! Marshal, my dear! So you’re embarking without having visited la bella Italia! What does this mean?”
The Pope: “Darn! The President of Brazil, the world’s most clerical republic, doesn’t want to see the Pope?”
The Marshal: “Oh, gentlemen! It is a simple matter of courtesy… Your immigrants cannot come to my land for a reason that I can’t explain? … I can’t go to yours either, because of… cholera… Love is repaid with love.”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1910)
The public health authorities have advised: “Our salvation against cholera lies in fire. Let’s cook our food very well, let’s boil our drinking water well.”
In short: let us be careful, cook everything, watch for the boiling point, like in San Salvador!
(second image) Yet insofar as the measure is really good, it should be expanded… And, we say to ourselves: Let’s cook the newspapers daily that feed our spirit with the indigestible prose of odious and personal campaigns!
Only thus may we fear in tranquillity…
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1910)
On differences between the Argentinian and Brazilian responses to the cholera epidemic. (The Argentinians appear to be uniformly armed with disinfectant sprayers.) “Regarding cholera and what can be seen: Argentina is energetically preparing for the horrendous monster with its giant maw (?). And us? We are only preoccupied with our… rage!” (I.e., choler)
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1910)
A cartoon set in the year of the Brazilian National Exposition in 1908: “We’re toast, my dear, we are toast! We have drought and famine, parade floats, smallpox, Exposition parties, bubonic plague, propagandists of Brazil, and now here comes cholera!”
“What do you want? Disasters always come in multiples… But the worst of it all is that I don’t see men capable of curbing these ills, despite the [manioc] flour of erudition with which they are stuffed… because of the leaves.” (Meaning that appearance prevailed over substance?)
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1908)
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)
Banishing the demons in this advertisement by Bayer in Rio de Janeiro during the Spanish flu epidemic. “Undoubtedly, modern Medical Science, thanks to its surprising progress, knows how to successfully conjure away these horrible specters…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1919)
And in a similar vein:
“That’s the Spanish flu. Do not expose yourself to not staying on your spine.” (Spain/spine, get it? OK, it doesn’t really work in translation.)
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1918)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 