(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)
Death loves a shining mark.
(Puck, New York, 1900)
Public health officers are depicted beating away at rags suspected of bearing contagion. This issue contained extensive coverage of the advance of cholera in Europe and the preparations of New York public health authorities for its possible arrival on American shores.
(The Evening World, New York, 1892)
“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink.” Matthew 6:25
(Shelves include “tuberculosis lard.” This was published later in the year when Upton Sinclair levelled his devastating indictment of the Chicago meatpacking industry in The Jungle.)
(Puck, New York, 1906)
Uncle Sam: “Well, we seem to be getting along a little better than the rest of the world, and if we can’t be thankful for all that we have, we may at least be thankful that there are some things which we haven’t.”
(Puck, New York, 1883, via Library of Congress)
See the detail in the upper right corner:
Father Knickerbocker: “Great heavens! is this all my descendants can do to keep this great city healthy!”
Representative of the Street-Cleaning Department [likely Irish]: “If yez think yez can swape a mile of strate a day wid sich a brum better nor me, yez better thry it.”
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, New York, 1879 (via Library of Congress)
Cutting a continent out from under him.
(Puck, New York, 1911) (The cheapest of colonialist metaphors, and marginal to this archive’s concerns, but let us preserve it nonetheless.)
(Puck, New York, 1887)
China: “I will make it HOT for you!”
(Puck, New York, 1883)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 