(Newspapers) Organized fight against diseases in Latvia. — The Executive Committee decided to ask President G. Zemgale, Dr. P. Kalniņš, and P. Juraševski to assume the duties of honorary presidents of Health Week.
Disease germs [on the floor being swept away and disinfected]: “Then why us alone! There’s still a whole gang over there!” [corruption at the treasury coffer]
(Svari, Riga, 1928)
“So you had the measles? I had it too, and by the way it was very serious.”
“Mine was much more serious. I had it on vacation!”
(Gutiérrez, Madrid, 1928)
“Why are you guys clearing out? That’s a doctor coming to us, not a lecturer…”
“So much the worse! It means he’s crazy!”
(Krokodil, Moscow, 1928) (Included because the doctor is armed with a giant clystère, an ongoing theme.)
(In the official Instructions for fighting the flu issued by the Kharkov regional public health authorities it says in the Russian text: “The patient must be kept in bed,” but in the Ukrainian text: “The patient must be at the bedside.”)
Left panel: Treatment in Russian
Right panel: Treatment in Ukrainain
(Perets, Kharkiv, 1928)
“Is that an epidemic?”
“Nah, whaddya mean… Family night at our club.”
(Krokodil, Moscow, 1928)
(Newspapers report there is no disinfection station in Kharkiv)
Experienced flea (to young one): “I’ve drunk my share of ‘nice blood’… And how did I manage? I didn’t bother with the district’s healthy types. Do it like that, son. You will also experience a good life and a nice old age.”
(Perets, Kharkiv, 1928)
“What did you find with the patient Petrov?”
“Aside from a great desire to go to a resort, nothing.”
(We’ll include this on a technicality, since there is a public health poster about typhus in the background. More remarkable is the quasi-Cubist style of the artist, Semyon Zaltser, a prolific caricaturist working in Odessa. See also Zaltser’s “Medicine and life.”)
(Perets, Kharkiv, 1928)
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1928)
Dr. Karrapatoff discovered the way to breed microbes in order to study them.
After difficult and complicated experiments, he solved the problem with just one drug.
Microbes of gigantic proportions emerged, true monsters.
The roles are reversed, the microbe swallows the man, who gets so small that he becomes a microman. (magnified 200 diameters)
The microbes do microscopic research to discover the microman in their organism. The microbes are being attacked by various diseases.
Several specialists are called in to tackle the epidemics caused by the spread of the microman in the organism of the microbes – humanity is avenged.
An especially evocative Brazilian ad for insecticides against epidemic disease insects.
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1928)
(Clementino Fraga was Brazil’s top public health official, best known for working to eradicate yellow fever in Rio de Janeiro.)
Yellow fever (to bubonic plague): “Now, my dear, my turn has come…”
(O Malho, Rio de Janeiro, 1928)
“Battling disease germs,” reads the headline, including disinfecting books (center and right photos). (Volksfreund, Austria, 1928) Can we have our library books back now?
Sic Transit Pestilentia 