“So, colleague, what have you come up with regarding cholera?”
“In case it appears in our city, I won’t take less than 25 rubles for a visit.”
“Bene; and that’s how I’ll travel around the cities.”
“What for, won’t there be enough patients for both of us.”
“It’s not that. As soon as cholera appears in the city, I’ll skip town and keep studying this disease in uninfected locales.”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1883)
A pickpocket (in wonder): “Where are people running?”
Crowd: “Alas! Can’t you see it says above: a contagious disease reigns here.”
Pickpocket: “Well, if that’s the case, then I’ll just go in, because I know the police can’t go inside.”
(Telefon, Belgrade, 1883)
“I’m not entirely sure where it would be best to introduce myself to the new boss: at the hospital or at the prison?”
“You know, doctor, I think it would be best to introduce yourself where most of your patients are.”
“Where do you mean?”
“At the cemetary.”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1883)
Wife: “All the newspapers are talking about cholera. I’m afraid! Are you afraid, sweetie?”
Husband-doctor: “Yes, I’m afraid… that it’ll never reach us…”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1883)
The population of Hunter’s Row [in central Moscow], in view of the cholera threat, are starting to take care about their cleanliness. Swine provide the prime example [passing through a Moscow sauna].
(Several years later the municipal authorities would construct a major public abattoir, motivated in part by public health concerns, as you can learn from the work of Anna Mazanik.)
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1883)
“Now there’s cholera in Egypt; were my husband to be assigned there, I would quickly be made a widow and immediately get married to Paul.”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1883)
Visitor: “Man, gimme another half bottle, please.”
Waiter: “But you, sir, are already properly soused.”
Visitor: “It’s just for courage, I’m really afraid of cholera.”
Waiter: “But thank God we haven’t heard anything about it here.”
Visitor: “At home my wife is clean, and my brother is… cholera.” [presumably the usual wordplay about “choleric”?]
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1883)
“What do you mean, you want to force me to quarantine at the Spanish border?”
“Your majesty will pardon us, Sire, we are only carrying out your orders. You have imposed a quarantine on all travelers coming from countries infested by cholera or plague…”
“Well!”
“But, Sire, your Majesty is coming from France and could bring us the republic.”
(Le Triboulet, Paris, 1883)
Uncle Sam: “Well, we seem to be getting along a little better than the rest of the world, and if we can’t be thankful for all that we have, we may at least be thankful that there are some things which we haven’t.”
(Puck, New York, 1883, via Library of Congress)
See the detail in the upper right corner:
Cholera: I greet you, my friend, John Bull, and I greet the khedive.
I come for my pleasure, I am then besotted.
I think you’re sitting here and still just bored.
Today I have therefore come so we may be together.
None of you invited me here, I invite myself, friends.
There will be life and desire here… no, death, for you know my weapon.
I want to rule, even I, in good potentates.
When I strike, I strike powerful blows, then proud states tremble.
I have an irresistible power, and here, so bright and sunny,
we must now dance to the beat and have so much fun.
(Fäderneslandet, Stockholm, 1883)
I think a skull is visible at the bow,
a passenger with respect.
But the ship has expensive cargo, too,
and that aroused my desire to shop.
Cholera will never bother me,
whenever it comes to a good deal,
and therefore the ship may pass freely,
even if it carries the infection inside.
You should earn interest on your coin, I mean,
but not salted away in quarantine.
Yes, so long as I earn money,
I’ll steer it to the hometown of cholera.
I do not regret my illness,
no, in my slaked lime I feel so good.
Here we have healthy and sound stomachs,
and gold is everything for a shopkeeper’s soul.
(Fäderneslandet, Stockholm, 1883)
Gabriel Liquier penned cartoons under the aliases Trick and Trock for La Caricature in Paris. Around the time that cholera was peaking again in France in 1884, some of his miscellaneous drawings touched on the epidemic, and we shall collect them together here. (As usual, links to sources are embedded in the images.)
“Where are you going so quickly, Calino?”
“I am taking precautions against cholera: I’m off to buy a cordon sanitaire.”
“My little choleric, be very nice: don’t die without telling me if it’s Asian cholera or our cholera!”
“Are you suffering from sciatica? Oh, my poor sir, that is a symptom of cholera…”
“Not possible!”
“It’s a sciatic cholera.” (“Asiatic”)
(The same pun was recycled in 1892 in Le Journal amusant.)
“What is this note, madame?… What am I looking at! An appointment granted to a photographer!”
“But, my love, when you have cholera, how will I cure you with collodion if I don’t learn photography?”
“So, Mr. Guibollard, do they think the cholera microbe has been found?”
“Perfectly. It’s a certain comma microbe… I’m so sure of it that I no longer put punctuation in what I write!”
“The cholera from here is nothing, madame! But with us, everyone flees.”
“Yet you have only had one death…”
“That is true…, but it is that of the mayor!”
“A fire at the Porno-Naturalist Library.”
“In this time of cholera, it may be a sanitation measure.”
“Since the closing of my theater I have been looking for a remedy against cholera…. and I haven’t found it!”
“This poor director! He will never get his hands on a good formula!”
“So don’t be nervous, Mr. Fouinard: the Pyrenees will serve as a barrier against Spanish cholera.”
“Precisely… I let myself be told that someone would have said that there were no more Pyrenees!”
You know what, Mr. Housemaster: if the lord of the manor wants to have cleanliness in the house for the sake of cholera, then let’s wash out your filthy mouth first.
(Humoristické listy, Prague, 1883)
China: “I will make it HOT for you!”
(Puck, New York, 1883)
Multiple panels from Lo Spirito folletto, Milan, 1883:
All the press is reproaching England for importing cholera from the Indies… but John Bull does not care…
… and leaves the other powers to take care of drawing sanitary cordons…
… and instituting quarantines…
… and making the municipal inspectors sweat, etc., etc….
… but the only weapons against this terrible scourge are the ones presented here.
Sic Transit Pestilentia 