Opera diva: “Hello? Who’s there? … The secretary? … Good. Tell the director that I’m not performing tonight. The theater is definitely empty and I have such a case of flu that the doctor, who’s with me just now, says I have to take to bed for a while.”
(Der Floh, Vienna, 1899) (See a similar version, albeit with the diva invoking only generic illness, in the Russian magazine Oskolki in 1896.)
Physician: “Keep in mind that the influenza is itself not so bad, but it can have very unpleasant aftereffects.”
Patient: “I noticed that when I got your bill, Doctor!”
(Humor/Neues Wiener Journal, Vienna, 1900)
A nearly identical cartoon in Der Floh, Vienna, 1899:
Woman: “Could you bypass us?”
Plague (still carrying wares from India): “Yes, girl, yes; I have so many calamities at home that it will be a month before I come.”
(La Campana de Gracia, Barcelona, 1899)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 