“Would you please hear me out… Voice?… The mayor’s certificate, the lady of the house in bed, with seven hungry children…”
“Impossible; the gentleman is currently suffering from ‘encephalitis lethargica’ [sometimes called sleeping sickness].”
(La Esquella de la torratxa, Barcelona, 1920)
(Suffering patients include low rents, renovation works, the nationalist spirit of the league, frozen beef (?).)
“Indeed, all the manifestations, all the symptoms are of the ‘encephalitis lethargica’.”
(La Esquella de la torratxa, Barcelona, 1920)
“Encephalitis might be a sufficient pretext for not paying your rent…”
(Le Rire, Paris, 1920)
“I fooled myself again. Then you should trust the news.”
“What happened?”
“I read that the sleeping sickness is raging in Brno, I head there, I get into four apartments, but nobody was sleeping anywhere…”
(Humoristické listy, Prague, 1920)
“Is this what they call a new disease?… I’ve been suffering from it for so many years!…”
(La Campana de Gracia, Barcelona, 1920)
Let’s join in a dance circle
Vile hearts, dirty hands!
The profiteer, the typhus louse
And an obscene bribe, too
Let’s wrap around the globe
Death accompanies: hop! hop! hop!
Soon the carnival will end
So everyone wants to romp,
The profiteer, the typhus louse
And an obscene bribe, too
Death plays along
Hop to it! hi! hi! hi!
(Szczutek, Lwów, 1920) (No bonus points for noting that the profiteer is caricatured as Jewish.)
Call it influenza, flu, sleeping sickness–
Despite this lovely trinity
Finally, joyous sounds are coming again this year
The good old days of carnival!
(Nebelspalter, Zurich, 1920)
German Michaels: “You, accursed France, make sure I don’t break the terms of the peace treaty, and in the meantime I’ll inject some liquid in you for which I received the sales rights in Europe from the firm, “Lenin, Trotsky & Co.” in Moscow. (This is straightforward politics-as-contagion, but note the clystère, an ongoing theme.)
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1920)
…and the heroic resistance of the public health authorities.
“Go away! Don’t go in here!”
(Il Pasquino Coloniale, São Paulo, 1920)
More propaganda than cartoon, this image was published during the Polish-Soviet war of 1920: “Rejoice, Europe! It’s true that because of the Polish victories you have missed the deliveries of tea and caviar, but you have also avoided the visitation of the four Russian witches: anarchy, plague, cholera, and typhus.”
(Mucha, Warsaw, 1920)
This image is taken a bit out of context. It is mocking the supposedly Napoleonic ambitions of a Moravian nationalist and Catholic literary figure named Karel Dostál-Lustinov, who was the driving figure behind a fraternal gymnastics movement known as the Eagles (think of parallels with the YMCA). What is striking for present purposes is that the Eagles are being called to prepare for battle (against the Republic?), and they are doing so with disinfection spritzers. (In Czech the verb seems to hint at an adjacent meaning of “cleansing.”)
(Rašple, Brno, 1920)
“In filthy residences any contagion can take root for a long time.” “Filth and uncleanliness are one of most important causes of our illnesses.” Detail from an educational poster by the Ukrainian People’s Commissariat of Health, 1920. (Russian State Library)
“Here is the cause of typhus!!! Beat the louse! Kill the louse or you will die.”
Soviet public health poster, c. 1920.
(Russian State Library)
“Cholera has already taken up residence with us and her bony army of death threatens factories and plants, it threatens the army. To arms! Get vaccinated! The enemy does not wait!” (Ekaterinodar, 1920) (Russian State Library)
“Say Bunny, did you have the Spanish thing?”
“Not that. But I did have a Bulgarian.”
(Borsszem Jankó, Budapest, 1920)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 