Victims of science

“And how’s business?”
“Ah! Don’t talk to me about it, their “606” has killed condom sales.”
(L’Assiette au beurre, Paris, 1910)

Remarkably, the entire issue is devoted to Paul Ehrlich’s “606” miracle cure for syphilis.

The flu

From Le Charivari, Paris, 1848:

View of a pharmacist shop in January 1848. “Each in turn, gentlemen, each in turn.”

“Well, my dear, it is impossible for me to pay you today; I have the flu.”

“Where are your men, lieutenant?”
“My commander, they’ve all gone to bed.”

“Just a few more bottles of my syrup, and I hope you’ll get better.”

At the show. General sneezing across the board.

“Come on, coachman, come on!”
“I can’t go any faster, sir, my horse has the flu.”

A mistress of the house has to eat alone a dinner prepared for forty people. (No doubt punning on “quarantine.”)

Acclimatization of Abd-el-Kader. (Algerian military leader then held captive by the French. Note the clystère in the background, a familiar French theme.)
“Cristi! This time here I am completely taken!”

Cholera does not come to France for fear of catching the flu there.

Christmas eve, 1914

“Hey, Little Father, no cheating: tobacco to us… and cholera to the Krauts!”
(Le Rire, Paris, 1914)

Messrs. Beust and Gramont are cooling off their heartburn

The former Austrian foreign minister, Count Beust, had clashed with the French foreign minister, the Duc de Gramont, in the lead-up to the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. This cartoon from early 1873 followed upon Beust’s attempt to settle accounts by publishing letters from that period. Though this is straight politics, I include it because of the clystères, an ongoing theme. (See also this Mexican example from 1886, also a cholera year.)
(Humoristické listy, Prague, 1873)

Paris carnival

The “Where’s Waldo” quality of the illustration is charming in its own right, but see if you can find the clystère (an ongoing theme).
(L’Eclipse, Paris, 1870)

Behind the scenes

“My dear little director, how is it that you have cut my fee in half!”
“What do you want? It’s this time of influenza.”
“Well! But what would you say if I only showed one leg?”
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1890)

Influenza suites in the chamber

The quaestor replacing the legendary glass of water with assorted herbal teas.
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1890)

By telephone

“How did you catch influenza without going out?”
“It must have been by telephone, where there are all kinds of maladies.”
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1890)

The whole world has the flu

The round of doctors and knobs.
(Le Grelot, France, 1890)

At the opera

“Sir, the third dancer has just gotten the flu. Couldn’t you take his place, since you are the patron of the little girl who dances with him?”
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1889)

Influenza and influences

This epidemic, my dear brothers, is a heavenly warning, a punishment from God to his enemies here below that… that… Achoo! (Aside) Fine! here I am affected, too!
(detail from full cartoon below, Le Charivari, Paris, 1889)

Advantages of Monaco

(among many other advantages illustrated in a multi-panel cartoon) No influenza!
(Le Charivari, Paris, 1890)

Celestial wrath

China: “I will make it HOT for you!”
(Puck, New York, 1883)

Fowl play

“You haven’t been out hunting, you’re lying: this partridge is already all green!”
“…I did have my suspicions…, it looked very sick: no doubt it comes from Italy, it has cholera!”
(Le Rire, Paris, 1910)

Medical nemesis

Mocking the quantifying pretensions of the scientific man of medicine, at a time when his clinical interventions were inadequate. François Fabre, Némésis médicale illustrée (1840), with illustrations by Daumier.
(ETH Bibliothek)