The pharmacist

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.

Train conversations

“So you’re coming directly from Egypt? Where is Egypt again?”
“Egypt lies in the zone left of the equator which is called heat in geography. It borders in the north on the quarantine, in the south on the Turkish army, in the west on biblical history, and runs into the English ambassador in the east.” (Remaining text continues in this vain, mocking the traveller’s false erudition.)
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1869)

Cricket!

So very English, this Punch cartoon from 1869.