Though we are archiving visual epidemic humor, a brief gesture toward the sense of smell seems appropriate. The Parisian parfumerie Delettrez began selling L’eau de cologne du Grand-Cordon in 1857, and this unisex perfume seems to have established the Delettrez brand. Less expected (at least for me) was its embrace by the Parisian public as one of the many elixirs against cholera. Although Pasteur’s germ theory was beginning to make headway at the time of the 1884 epidemic resurgence, miasmatic theories still predominated in the general public.

Consider this endorsement from Le Voleur illustré: “We could not recommend too much to our readers of both sexes the use of l’eau de cologne du Grand-Cordon, which is not only a first-rate perfume and cosmetic, but also a very effective product against the miasmas and unhealthy fumes so dangerous in times of cholera. It is wise to use l’eau de cologne du Grand-Cordon every morning, to soak your handkerchief and linen with it, and to carry a bottle with you. Such precautions, even if exaggerated, never hurt anyone.”

A different sense of “cordon sanitaire“?

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!”