(Only an indirect connection to pandemics, but the section of the soccer stadium reserved for those suspected of typhus speaks to the social status theme.)
The respectable public: “Beast! Scoundrel! Assassin! Agrarian! Moron!”
The naive spectator: “Well now, this must be that striker they say has such a reputation!”
(Buen Humor, Madrid, 1931)
“Now I am trying a new treatment for the flu. It consists of giving them a bottle of cognac to drink in the morning and another bottle of rum in the afternoon.”
“And they get better?”
“No, sir. What they get is much happier.”
(Buen Humor, Madrid, 1931) (Compare this Finnish version.)
“My son was also vaccinated today. Do you think it will be of any use?”
“Is it useful? What else, I say! Our Jonah was vaccinated yesterday and today he fell down the stairs and broke the very arm that had been vaccinated.”
(Tuulispää, Helsinki, 1931)
“Your money or I sneeze.”
(Eindhovensch dagblad, 1931)
“And why do they call her “the Flu”?”
“Because you have to sweat a lot to get rid of her.”
(Gutiérrez, Madrid, 1931)
“Adabei” (roughly, “Also there”) was a byline for a series of columnists at Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung in Vienna. Sometimes cast as a pompous mascot for the newspaper, Adabei is here depicted in a mask interviewing a disreputable visitor, another recurrence of influenza. The poster reads: “Only for a short time longer!!! Personal appearance of the true Spanish feverish dancer, Señorita Katarrhina Flu, with her coughing and sneezing ensemble.” (1931)
“Look, Quim; those “hygiene” people were here, and they say that this might be a den of bubonic plague.”
“It would be better to take care to eradicate the Bourbon Plague.”
(La Esquella de la torratxa, Barcelona, 1931)
Apparatus for mountain hiking at home, for those who can’t afford to go out.
(Mucha, 1931) (Compare this earlier version in Fliegende Blätter, 1892)
On a lighter note in our time of quarantine:
Man: “But you agreed, my child, that we would retreat from the world for four weeks!”
Woman: “Retreat from the world, sure, but I cannot bear complete solitude. Not a single interviewer has come here for eight days.”
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1931)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 