The observations that have now become familiar from the time of the influenza showed that the people who make beer and drink diligently were spared from it completely or nearly so.
In the event of the return of influenza or the arrival of a dear relative called “Rona”, the establishment of an “Imperial and Royal General Pilsner Beer Hospital” is recommended. Its director: Councillor Leopold Schmid, innkeeper in Griechengasse.
(Figaro, Vienna, 1890)
Teacher: “Greetings, dear colleague, how’s it going, lots to do?”
Physician: “Thanks, nothing now that the influenza is over.”
Teacher: “But that’s why we do! Oh, fortunate influenza times!”
(Figaro, Vienna, 1890)
“How did you catch influenza without going out?”
“It must have been by telephone, where there are all kinds of maladies.”
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1890)
“Now I’m at my wit’s end! All the beds are occupied, all the walkways are occupied, and huge numbers of patients keep coming with this damned influenza!”
“What if we were to let it be publicized in the newspapers that influenza has just been stamped out?”
(Figaro, Vienna, 1890)
“What do you think about this awful influenza? Half of Vienna is confined to its bed.”
“It’s a pleasant ceasefire, madam! All of my creditors lie in feverish delirium, they imagine namely that I will repay them by the New Year.”
(Wiener Caricaturen, Vienna, 1890)
The round of doctors and knobs.
(Le Grelot, France, 1890)
Nebelspalter, Zurich, 1890:
Policeman: “Come along, you have influenza!”
Drunk: “Yes, and how? I’ve been looking for a doctor for three days and can’t find one — they’re all sick!”
“What a serious misfortune has afflicted your family!”
“Oh, it’s nothing, we only let ourselves be influenzed!”
“There are people who claim that influenza (achoo!) starts with a headache (achoo!) and delirium (achoo!).”
“Hell, then you’ve got the same thing all year round.”
“Hey, neighbor, don’t cough so loud, I can’t sleep!”
“Oh, if you don’t allow me to cough, I have the right to stop you from sleeping.”
Punch, London, 1890
(among many other advantages illustrated in a multi-panel cartoon) No influenza!
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1890)
Bolond Istók, Budapest, 1890.
In the fall of 1889 sixty five Galician emigration agents and their associates (including state railway employees) were charged with fraud and other crimes in the course of facilitating emigration to America. At a time when emigration from the Habsburg and Romanov Empires to the United States was beginning its precipitous rise to historic levels after the turn of the century, domestic concerns about what kinds of people were going, under what conditions, and with what potential to maintain financial ties to their homelands all permeated the discussion around the trial, held in Wadowice southwest of Cracow. Many of the middlemen facilitating passage to trans-Atlantic ships out of Hamburg and Bremen came from Jewish backgrounds, while many local opponents of emigration, if not blatantly anti-Semitic, were increasingly fretting about the health of the remaining population (meaning a tangle of both medical-physical and organic-political characteristics). The popular press painted the accused as “human traffickers,” “vampires,” and “slave traders and bloodhounds,” feeding a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism. (See the authoritative account by Tara Zahra.) The “echo of the Wadowice trial reverberated across all of Europe,” fostering the conviction among local patriots that “the protection of native land and rational internal colonization should emerge from the fog of fantasies and good intentions and pass as soon as possible into the sphere of accomplished deeds.”
Large-circulation newspapers like Neuigkeits Welt Blatt in Vienna made certain that their readers could not miss the Jewish lineage of many of the shipping agents.
After months of testimony featuring hundreds of witnesses, the lead accused were sentenced to several years in prison. During the prolonged sensation that was the court trial, “Russian influenza” made its epidemic return to Central Europe, traveling quickly by rail and shipping routes from the northeast to the south and west. Though its symptoms were much less dramatic than cholera, influenza hit perhaps 40% of the Hungarian population that winter, for example, and as much as half of the German population, though the associated mortality rates were quite low.
There was a mean-spirited Polish cartoon related to the trial. (The text contains Yiddishisms, so my rendering is surely problematic.)
What’s for me today is for you tomorrow.
(sign pointing to the Promised Land of America)
Wadowice showed
That in Austria, too, good fortune is not here,
Each keeps his mouth shut until everyone’s
Children come to America!
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1890)
The cartoon below provides an uncomfortable linkage between the trial and the epidemic.
At the trial in Wadowice a heartrending picture presented itself to the onlookers.
“Have you started crying about the tragic fate of the emigrants?”
“No, influenza has broken out in the courthouse.”
(Kikeriki, Vienna, 1890)
Prince Carneval and Lady Patroness Influenza
(Der Floh, Vienna, 1890)
…schools were closed, but ice skating was opened in thick fog.
(Kikeriki, Vienna, 1890)
Dr. Koch: “Well, Uncle Morbus, I’ve cooked it down with this little decoction.”
Cholera Morbus: “Nothing to it, Doc! It’s a heated little war — and within a day I’ll get back what you deprived me of.”
(Borsszem Jankó, Budapest, 1890)
For the lover-boy cases… the hose is the best.
(La Esquella de la torratxa, Barcelona, 1890)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 