Tag: 1908

An idea for Dr. Oswaldo Cruz

From O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1908.

When the Indians revolted and did not want to give him supplies, Christopher Columbus told them that because of this, the sun would disappear. It was a stratagem; Colombo knew there was going to be an eclipse of the sun. When it started, the savages submitted and worshiped him…

Brazilian vaccination cartoon

And since in many things the people of today differ little from the savages of that time, Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, who only works for the good, can also employ a stratagem. The Hachette journal puts out an illustration showing that vaccinations in Paris are chic…

…put out the word to the up-to-date people of Botafogo [upscale beachfront neighborhood in Rio]. Soon there will not be enough vaccinators. The whole arroz aristocracy will make a real advance in the lancets of public health.

For the other popular classes in Rio: washerwomen, shysters, soldiers, innkeepers, Dr. Oswaldo will say that the “crum” [raw?] inoculated vaccine will give everyone the ability to foretell and enjoy good fortune in the numbers game [illegal gambling]…
The vaccination posts will then be insufficient to contain the crowd of those agitating to get in…

Things that don’t exist

“So you think that only the lack of vaccine is what causes the smallpox epidemic to explode, grow, and worsen? What! There is also a lack of cleanliness in the city. Have you noticed how the streets are, from Campo de Santa Anna upwards? It is dust, garbage, and stagnant water everywhere… I have never seen such mediocre service. At this point we’ve been walking backwards like the crab!…”
“And City Hall?”
“What City Hall?! …”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1908)

Brazilian hygiene cartoon

The epidemics

Yellow fever, plague, and smallpox stand arrayed in chorus against public health in the person of Oswaldo Cruz, the biologist and government official most closely identified with Brazil’s efforts to introduce obligatory vaccination.
(choir in the background) “If it weren’t for you getting in the way of our sinister steps, what a good harvest we would have made during the visit of the American fleet!”
(Revista da Semana, Rio de Janeiro, 1908) (Compare Oswaldo Cruz’s iconic status in O Malho.)

Soccer at the smallpox “field”

Director of the Department of Public Health Oswaldo Cruz (wearing Public Health sash): “The vaccine kills the pigskins! It’s written in our books, it’s a proven fact! The goal of your positivism and your science in…”
Mathematician, philosopher, and vaccination opponent Raimundo Teixeira Mendes (wearing Positivist sash): “The goal is yours, you slob! I’ll prove to you by A + B how it’s me who’s with the good of humanity!…”
Joe Public: “Yes! keep arguing! Pick a fight about whether the line of the “footballer” is making your goals [victims], and fairly. In this three-month “match” there are already 2,432…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1908)

Brazlian smallpox cartoon

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)

Polish smallpox cartoon

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)

Polish smallpox cartoon

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)

Hungarian flu cartoon

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.)

French vaccine cartoon

Dear Cholera!

“Just spare my few really Russian people, the others are not important anyway!”
(By the fall of 1908 the last wave of cholera was widespread in the Russian Empire and to a lesser degree in the Ottoman Empire as well. Russia’s entanglements along its southern borders, including a Russian colonel leading a Persian Cossack siege of the Majlis in Teheran in June, but especially the declaration of independence of its client state Bulgaria in October, were cause for concern amid the turmoil of Ottoman politics–when this cartoon appeared, the Young Turks, many from military backgrounds, had upended the Ottoman court. That said, I’m insufficiently informed about the iconography at work here.)
(Lustige Blätter, Berlin, 1908)

German cholera cartoon

A nice fraternal gift

“Won’t you permit me, dear brothers from across the Vistula, a little cholera?”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1908)

Polish cholera cartoon

Some rhyming couplets on the same page offer counsels for Warsaw residents during a cholera epidemic:

Whoever doesn’t want to be infected with the cholera bacillus,
Let him not remember that there is martial law.

In these choleric times things are not headed in a healthy direction
Think about Filevich or Menshikov. [Russian monarchists hostile to Polish separatist sentiments]

The best epidemic fostered among humans,
Where people get irritated by what Rossiya writes. [monarchist newspaper]

Don’t worry about the Swabs in Łódź either,
For you will definitely grab the spare hospital.

The nicest thought is still that whether you are a Belgian or a Turk,
And you will be healthy, even though you ate a raw cucumber.

For the worst thought in the world is
That you bear the heavy lot of the Pole on your neck.