(Miasma of INFLUENZA in the sky above)
Distilled and bottled for ye kindely Gentlemen of ye Elkes Clube Number 841.
Rush on a Germicide Station during the Scare.
(Charles Reese, 1919, via National Library of Medicine)
(Le Régiment, Paris, 1919) (Sexist fare for the troops.)
Finally, what do we call superfluous?… Hors-d’oeuvre, for example… But they are necessary to admire the most rosy of the nails when they are unwrapped with an indolent finger…
Perfume?… But it is necessary to fight the Spanish flu… The [Medical] Faculty will tell you, ah!…
Our little doggie?… But he is needed as a liaison… (A war veteran looks at the address on the dog’s collar.)
High laced boots?… But they are necessary to emphasize the arch of the foot and the size of the calf above the thinness of the ankle…
Our light and scanty chemise?… That, I grant you, is sometimes superfluous…
A nice aviator?… But I assure you that it is badly necessary when you have an old husband…
(Le Régiment, Paris, 1919)
The flu? Nothing could be easier to avoid, if you would follow the recommendations I’m making for you…
And first of all, if you have to get in line, to join the crowd: don’t hesitate! Put on a mask against the miasma… Leave all coquetry aside.
In the subway, if a man speaks too close to you, do not hesitate to spray him with Goménol, Cresyl, or other disinfectant products.
And above all … ah! above all, don’t let anyone kiss you. Use the most energetic means to drive any intrusive person away from you.
Take baths of phenic acid solution, phenol, and other horrors.
Ah! no, no, rather a hundred times the flu: kiss me quickly, my darling… all night long I’m going to have nightmares about the idea of everything I would have to do not to catch it!
(Le Régiment, Paris, 1919)
We could very well have taken hill 304… but not be able to take the Metro.
One may have resisted Kraut attacks… …but not resist French attacks.
There are the exploding bombs we escape… We are killed by certain explosions… of endearment.
With a mask we are not afraid of noxious gases. Without a mask, they are more annoying…
(Le Régiment, Paris, 1919)
“I’m panicked… my husband, who’s gone to the provinces on business, is stuck in bed down there with the Spanish flu…”
“I can’t stand it any longer… I love him too much… I’m going to join him… A few light clothes and off we go!…”
“Here’s his hotel!!! Here’s the door to his room… In we go!”
“Oh, what a sight!!! I sure see the Spanish… but where is the flu???”
Smith’s Weekly, Sydney, 1919
Acting Prime Minister Watt speaks of the assumption that the disease now in Australia is the dreaded type that ravaged half the world. He assures us that “the evidence in this direction is by no means conclusive.”
Casual Willy Watt: “Let her rip!”
(Western Mail, Perth, 1919) (Sign between skull and cowcatcher reads “Influenza.”)
The Daily Mail, Brisbane, 1919
Ringmaster Fitz: “Now then, Dummy, jump through the hoops.”
(Smith’s Weekly, Sydney, 1919)
John Daniel Fitzgerald, minister of public health in New South Wales during the global flu pandemic, is mocked here for his aggressive response to the crisis. Elsewhere Smith’s Weekly referred to him as “lord of the masks and master of the microbes.” See also this image depicting him making his disinfected rounds in a government vehicle:
Doctor: “Are those relatives of the patient?”
“No, those are neighbors: they found out that the patient has a terrible fever and came to warm up around him.”
(Bich, Paris, 1920) (Compare a similar German cartoon from 1847 in Fliegende Blätter)
Der neue Tag in Vienna printed a cartoon with a similar theme in 1919, apparently reprinted from a French source:
Title: “You have to know how to help yourself”
“Just stick close to Grandpa. He has the fever. Perhaps you’ll get warm near him.”
Mayor. “What good brings you here, madame flu?”
The flu. “I come, like I do every year, to listen to The Song of Forgetting.”
(El Mentidero, Madrid, 1919)
(A sniffly planet earth, as seen from the “Little Devil” Observatory during the second wave of the great flu pandemic.)
The planets are already aligned; the solar pressure gauge shows 2 million atmospheres. The earth is just a little capricious, but that’s nothing: In a moment there will be an explosion and the expected end of the world.
(Czorcik, Piotrków Trybunalski, 1919)
Banning confetti and streamers is good… Requiring the wearing of a mask and false nose against the flu in all circumstances would be better.
(Le Rire, Paris, 1919)
“Do you have any idea about this fool of a doctor who found a temperature curve in me!”
(Le Rire, Paris, 1919) (I doubt this idiom is adequate to the bad pun. The poor cubist has lost his edge, so to speak.)
Life diverse is playing tricks.
Does any one of you like it?
Yesterday it was a feast and toasts
And today the doctor and disease.
(Szczutek, Lwów, 1919)
In this period soon after the restoration of the Polish Republic, Kamil Mackiewicz produced several dozen multi-panel cartoons under the title “Fire and sword, or the adventures of crazy Greg — a contemporary story.” As one might guess from the title, there is a picaresque quality to Greg’s adventures, but I don’t know enough yet to make any hasty characterizations of the series. What is striking is that influenza and typhus do not figure in the narrative, despite their prevalence at the time. There is only this indirect gesture in the final panel of episode 27, at Greg’s wedding dinner, following their search for a vicar to marry them.
Sic Transit Pestilentia 