The man who sneezed in the railway compartment.
(De Sumatra post, 1925) (Compare these Hungarian and Czech variants.)

The man who sneezed in the railway compartment.
(De Sumatra post, 1925) (Compare these Hungarian and Czech variants.)

Cholera as angel of peace
(De Notenkraker, Amsterdam, 1912, via Historisch Archief)

This spare image is fascinating, appearing when an influenza epidemic had prevailed for more than two months in the city of Amsterdam, at a dramatic cost of nearly one in thirty residents every week. The artist, his own medicaments at hand, seems to be contemplating, not so much his own clinical predicament, but how to represent the crisis in visual terms. The self-portrait might represent his interim solution to a dilemma he is not sure how to address satirically. (The irregular Bijvoegsel supplement was most often humorous in content.)
(De Amsterdammer, Amsterdam, 1890)

“… What, Mr. Brewmaster, you haven’t had influenza yet? Congratulations! … It’s strange that this disease affects the finer people; I’ve had it twice!”
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1891) (redrawn and upped to “thrice” in Haagsche courant, 1898)
