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.

The death of theater

Typhus: “What does one more corpse matter to the world!” (Major theaters closed as typhus knifes a harlequin in the back.)
(La Esquella de torratxa, Barcelona, 1914)

Discretion… that’s the danger!

Regarding mortuary statistics and the pursuit of official hygiene toward plague, yellow fever, smallpox, scarlet fever and croup:
Syphilis: “The public health fight against our illustrious colleagues continues over there…”
Tuberculosis: “And in the meantime (coughing), we are very comfortable here (coughing)… There is nothing (coughing) like doing the job by the sidewalk… (coughing). We arrange more casualties annually (coughing) than all boisterous ailments together (coughing) and we are not uncomfortable…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1914)

The poor little German

Subtitled “On the vaccination debate.” Three quacks: “Listen, boy, there’s no other way! You have to get inoculated either against the black or the blue or the red pox.” It would be an interesting comparative exercise to study when vaccination is sufficiently widespread that it can be appropriated as a readily understood political metaphor (black conservative, blue centrist, and red social democratic, respectively).
(Kladderadatsch, Germany, 1914)

Taking the Arcadian cure

Detail of poster by Fyodor Zakarov for the All-Russian League for the Struggle with Tuberculosis, 1914.
(Russian State Library)