Before leaving for dacha

“I’m spreading rumors that plague and anthrax are raging in the vicinity of our dacha.”
“What in the world for?”
“It’s very simple: I’ll be spared the onslaught of dacha guests!”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1907)

The source of the typhoid in Vantaa

(sign labeled “Landfill”)
“The fountainhead is leaking, don’t look at that, turn your eyes somewhere else, turn your eyes somewhere else.”
(Tuulispää, Helsinki, 1907)

In the countryside

One of the pictures of starving typhus in the Russian countryside.
(Ersh, Tomsk, 1907)

Not God, but smallpox

“My dear, I got vaccinated…”
“And me too, right here…”
“Our age no longer fears God, but it greatly fears smallpox!”
(Le Journal amusant, Paris, 1907)

On the coast

“Have you ever drunk that bloody rotgut that the English call whiskey?”
“Yes.”
“Well! that’s what cured me of yellow fever on the coast of Africa.”
(Le Journal amusant, Paris, 1907)

Sanitary reform

“The time has arrived when drastic steps should be taken by the Council to remove a number of the dilapidated structures which exist.”
Health Board (to slum landlord as Typhoid lurks in the background): My methods are not nice, but neither is the company you keep.
(Western Mail, Perth, 1907)

Viennese vaccination

At the Imperial Royal Vaccination Institute [Austrian prime minister Count Max von Beck administering the shots to Hungarian ministers]
Hungarian prime minister Sándor Wekerle [second from left] (to the smallpox inoculator) “Take care then, Doctor, we don’t want to be seen with the Viennese pock on us!”
(Borsszem Jankó, Budapest, 1907)
(The decadal negotiations to renew the 1867 Compromise between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the Habsburg Empire were exceptionally contentious in 1907. The electoral franchise was broader in Austria than it was in Hungary, and Beck threatened to extend it to the Transleithanian portion of the empire, which would have threatened the ability of Hungarian politicians to control the fractious minorities who slightly outnumbered the Hungarian population. The mark on Minister of Agriculture Ignác Darányi’s shoulder reads “Serbian livestock,” signaling grudging Hungarian accession to a common tariff agreement, while Wekerle’s reads “common bank,” i.e., shared currency.)

A panic

The speech of the English socialist Quelch at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart had an excellent effect. It prevented the outbreak of sleeping sickness among the members of the Hague Peace Conference.
(Der wahre Jacob, Berlin, 1907)
(Harry Quelch was famously expelled from Germany for referring to the Hague Peace Conference as a “thieves’ supper.”)

On the return of Koch from Africa

Professor Koch has discovered an extremely effectively treatment against sleeping sickness. (Namely, loudly advertising his colonial researches.)
(Kikeriki, Vienna, 1907)
(In 1906 the famous German bacteriologist Robert Koch led a group of researchers to German East Africa in search of a cure for African sleeping sickness. Experimenting with a “magic bullet” of the sort his protégé Paul Ehrlich had developed in his laboratory, Koch and his associates treated thousands of patients with Atoxyl, an arsenic-based substance with toxic side effects. Though Koch remained convinced of its efficacy up to his death in 1910, this therapy proved to be his greatest failure.)

At the doctor

“Please, doctor, I would like you to inoculate me with [attenuated] smallpox, because I am afraid of getting the real thing. But I wouldn’t want to disfigure my shoulders [with a vaccination scar], especially since I often have to show décolletage. So can’t I be inoculated for smallpox on my leg? After all, it is all the same thing…”
“Yes, it’s all the same for the smallpox, but not for the doctor…”
(Goniec i iskra, Lwów, 1891)

And a similar cartoon some years later:
“Dear doctor, I am so afraid of smallpox, but will it be visible when you inoculate on my calf?”
“It only depends on you!”
(Kolce, Warsaw, 1908)

In the same sexist vein, a Hungarian cartoon:
Effective argument
“I didn’t bring the medical certificate, but here is the location for the flu vaccination…”
(Ludas Matyi, Budapest, 1974)

Or another twist:
Alibi ju jour
“This is silly, hickeys like that! What am I going to tell Ernest?”
“That your vaccines have taken very well, by Jove!”
(Le Rire, Paris, 1907) (Another French cartoon with related themes. And another from 1920.)

The odalisque

“What is the meaning of this costume?”
“Mr. Director, my wife has the flu, I’ve come to replace her.”
(Le Journal amusant, Paris, 1907)

Progress in travel

Car-shower, vehicle against heat and against alcoholism (it allows riding in the rain without drinking). The runoff will irrigate the streets along the way, stopping the dust, a use that makes the car-shower the best auxiliary of the Anti-Tuberculosis League and, mainly, of City Hall…
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1907)

On the street

“How about the benefit concert for the Leagues against Tuberculosis of Brazil and Portugal?”
“Splendid! I’ve never seen a party of its like here!”
“???!!!…”
“I’m not exaggerating! Tuberculosis has never been treated here… by music…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1907)

The iconic Oswaldo Cruz

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.

Wrong account (comic scene in 2 panels)

Public health physician writing official order that no more than three persons can live in this room: “But how can we fight tuberculosis if there is no housing, if poor people live piled up together?!… Carry out the orders at last! This room only has space for three people… Write!”

A tenant next door to the crowded room: “Hey, doc! I saw that sign you made and I’m telling you that your account is wrong! This room is the same size as that one, and all the people you see live here: me, my wife, my six–nearly seven–children, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, and…
Physician: “What! Even more people?”
Tenant: “… and inside, Doctor, I still have a painting with the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity!”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1907)