Brother and sister

Typhus: “What is it, darling sister, are you going away?”
Cholera: “Brother, I did not expect such a reception: no one was afraid of me, and they are even dogging me at every step. You can’t show your face anywhere: either I’ll run up against vitriol, or the Zhdanov brothers [purveyors of a sulphuric deodorant concoction since the 1840s; “Zhdanov liquid” was indeed tested for its effects on cholera and typhus in 1893]. But there was a time when I wasn’t greeted like this: I was given lots of leeway.”
Typhus: “And as for me, they don’t pay attention, sister: I have taken root here!”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1866)

Come back later

“Why did you come? What do you need?”
“For a favor to your grace.” [i.e., a loan]
“Well, no, I can’t give it to you now: there’s going to be cholera, come then and I’ll give you everything.”
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1865)

The surest diagnosis

“Tell me, doctor, how do you determine the lethality of a disease?”
“To be honest, in my view only two kinds of disease exist: the ones people die from, and the ones they don’t.”
(Shut, St. Petersburg, 1887)

In the countryside

One of the pictures of starving typhus in the Russian countryside.
(Ersh, Tomsk, 1907)

Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls

“….I asked around attentively about the state of the region. Were there any diseases in their province, rampant agues, any kind of deadly fevers, smallpox and the like…”
(Illiustratsiia, St. Petersburg, 1846; reprinted in A. A. Agin (artist) and E. E. Bernadskii (engraver), 100 Drawings for Gogol’s Dead Souls, 1892)

Meeting

(Pot of “Public health ignorance,” with death bearing scythe marked “cholera.”)
“Welcome, Cholera Sanitarovna! Make yourself at home!”
(Iumoristicheskii al’manakh, St. Petersburg, 1908)

We’ll throw in our hats!

(Cholera miasma in the air… Buckets labeled “Rotten vegetables,” “Public health ignorance,” “Municipal activities,” “Ice cream,” “Kvas,” and “Polluted water.”)
“Cholera is contained in an iron circle from which it cannot get out.” (from the newspapers)
(Iumoristicheskii al’manakh, St. Petersburg, 1908)

Stumbling blocks

Orator: “Cholera, gentlemen, has come to an end in Russia, but the Black Hundreds are still at it!”
(Iumoristicheskii al’manakh, St. Petersburg, 1908)

Bacteriological station

“Bac… ter… e… o… o… station. Eh…eh!!! Let’s go inside, Vasya, and have a drink!”
(Shut, St. Petersburg, 1893)

Latest Wall Street technology

“Improved six-barreled flea-thrower with a refuting double-barreled trailer.”
Ballistic cannisters labeled “plague,” “typhus,” “cholera.”
(American Secretary of State Dean Acheson and UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie are doing the refuting.)
(Krokodil, Moscow, 1952)

Don’t drink untreated water

Public health poster featuring water jar with cholera vibrios.
(Krasnoyarsk, circa 1910, via Russian State Library)

Strong nerves

Doctor: “Our sanatorium is not counterindicated for you, you have strong nerves, they can handle it.”
(Krokodil, Moscow, 1955)
(Public health and disease themes largely disappear from Krokodil after the 1930s, when the Soviet health system finally developed sufficient capacity to serve a burgeoning urban middle class. Yet a Crimean sanatorium like the one depicted here was still a precious resource in high demand, and gentle satire of middle-class aspirations remained a Krokodil specialty.)

Soviet fuel

Doctor: “Are those relatives of the patient?”
“No, those are neighbors: they found out that the patient has a terrible fever and came to warm up around him.”
(Bich, Paris, 1920) (Compare a similar German cartoon from 1847 in Fliegende Blätter)

Der neue Tag in Vienna printed a cartoon with a similar theme in 1919, apparently reprinted from a French source:
Title: “You have to know how to help yourself”
“Just stick close to Grandpa. He has the fever. Perhaps you’ll get warm near him.”

Diagnosis

Doctor: “And where would madame like to spend this year’s illness?”
(Ulk, Berlin, 1930)

And this Soviet variation:

“Doctor, find a disease in accord with these resort guides…”
(Krokodil, Moscow, 1962)

Dear Cholera!

“Just spare my few really Russian people, the others are not important anyway!”
(By the fall of 1908 the last wave of cholera was widespread in the Russian Empire and to a lesser degree in the Ottoman Empire as well. Russia’s entanglements along its southern borders, including a Russian colonel leading a Persian Cossack siege of the Majlis in Teheran in June, but especially the declaration of independence of its client state Bulgaria in October, were cause for concern amid the turmoil of Ottoman politics–when this cartoon appeared, the Young Turks, many from military backgrounds, had upended the Ottoman court. That said, I’m insufficiently informed about the iconography at work here.)
(Lustige Blätter, Berlin, 1908)