“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink.” Matthew 6:25
(Shelves include “tuberculosis lard.” This was published later in the year when Upton Sinclair levelled his devastating indictment of the Chicago meatpacking industry in The Jungle.)
(Puck, New York, 1906)
O Malho [The Sledgehammer] (solemnly, to Joe Public): “Drawing your attention to the Bastille of Routine, I celebrate in the best possible way the great date of the French Revolution and the date of my second centenary! Those five diggers [with public health official Oswaldo Cruz on the right, holding a syringe] have already demolished a lot, but there is still a lot to do… Down with any remaining attachment to the status quo!”
Joe Public: “Me as well! I want schools! I want housing for the poor! I want a steady fight against tuberculosis! … Let there be money!“
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1906)
(Under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.)
The serpent: “My dear pest, look at how you are arrayed!”
Eve: “It was Adam who lent me his fig leaf; it’s just that I carry it from behind.”
(Le Rire, Paris, 1906) (OK, this is a stretch, since it is not literally about the plague, but in a quirky way it seems to connect original sin with unpleasant modes of disease transmission. Perhaps I am committing the sin of Freudian overinterpretation. Or more likely my grasp of French idiom is not adequate to this case.)
Here is the dashing troika tearing down the high road
Three old witches howling, barking, shaking their shaggy heads:
Plague, reaction, cholera, but it is hunger (malnutrition) that holds the reins…
“All measures have been taken,” however…
The people should not be agitated…
(Pulemet, St. Petersburg, 1906)
Continuing the clystère theme from other posts.
(Parodia, Lisbon, 1906) (reprinted from L’Assiette au beurre, 1902)
I lack the Portuguese knowledge to translate all these cartoons in full, but in this post I just want to highlight the iconic status of bacteriologist and public health leader Oswaldo Cruz (1872-1917). For an avowedly secular publication like O Malho, Cruz as the standard-bearer of modern medicine clearly exerted tremendous appeal, though of course its satire often drew attention to the many obstacles in the way of achieving his aims.
(Each image links to the appropriate issue.)
Vaccine-mandate war!… (1904)
The journey of the mosquito czar. Reception in Victoria (1905)
Journey of the mosquito czar — arrival in Bahia (1905)
Essential cleaning (1907)
One more broom… (1907)
Cruz in provincial Pará (1910)
In Pará: Mosquito plague does not kill Governor Coelho (1911)
Federal intervention in Ceara (1914)
At the Pharoux Quay: The messiah of consumption (1908)
The great magician… of coincidences
Roping it in time (1908)
The challenge of tuberculosis (1906)
Plagues on the go (1907)
See also this multi-panel cartoon from 1905. And another from 1908. And a marvelous color cartoon from 1907. And this vaccination cartoon from 1904. Ditto.
General Oswaldo Cruz [Brazilian public health champion]: “Withdraw, you infamous woman! Get out of my sight, or else I will smash you!”
The Plague: “I will neither withdraw nor vanish! You are the foreigner in this city! Go take care of Rio de Janeiro and leave Campos to me.”
(The fight is blocked; but if the municipality of Campos does not carry out sanitation projects and the local public health authorities do not pursue the enemy daily… Hmm!!!)
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1906)
“Disinfection shells, fire!”
(Der Floh, 1906)
In May 1906 Archduke Franz Salvator opened a large international hygiene exhibition in Vienna. In early July the first major revision to the Hague Convention was adopted in Geneva, among other things strengthening the protections for prisoners of war. The International Committee of the Red Cross was especially prominent in pressing for these provisions, surely strengthening the modern conviction that enforced confinement should be sanitary. In this image we see a “hygienic dungeon cell from the year 1950,” as imagined in Viennese satirical magazine Der Floh in June 1906. Note how all the accoutrements come with the Red Cross symbol.
Sic Transit Pestilentia 