Life, 1914-02-26 · page 17 of 40
Life — February 26, 1914 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Left Cartoon:** A rural police officer stops a speeder, noting the driver's face looks familiar from previous offenses. This mocks small-town policing and repeat offenders. **"Purely Incidental":** Sarcastically praises Dr. Kirby for drilling into a patient's skull to treat paresis (neurosyphilis). The joke's dark humor: the serum worked, but the patient died anyway—yet the discovery is celebrated as "epoch-making." This satirizes medical hubris and prioritizing innovation over patient survival. **"The Whole Thing in a Nutshell":** A cynical political commentary showing the cycle of democracy as largely theater: citizens elect representatives who make speeches, newspapers report them, citizens ignore speeches for baseball news, representatives do as they please, and the cycle repeats. It suggests voter apathy enables unchecked leadership. **Bottom Right:** References "government pure food stamps"—likely referencing early 20th-century food safety regulations, joking about a dependent family member's limited diet.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Rural Constable (to speeder): AN’ THIS AIN'T YCR FIRST OFFENCE, EITHER; THAT FACE 0’ YOUR'N LOOKS FAMILIAR! Purely Incidental GOMMEND us to Dr. Elwood R. Kirby, of St. Mary’s Hospital, Philadelphia, to whom the world is indebted for a great idea. This gentleman, discovering that a serum invented as an antidote for paresis could not reach the brain of the patient through the ordinary channels, took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and, boring a hole through the patient’s skull, pumped the serum directly into his brain. The paresis, of course, was cured at once, the germs, belonging to Ancient and Honorable Paresis Artillery, folding up their tents like Arabs and silenting marching away. The patient himself died, but that was a mere incident due doubtless to a lack of propriety on his part as to the epoch-making value of a new medical discovery. The Whole Thing in a Nutshell THE people, grumbling slightly at the time taken from their affairs, elect representatives. The representatives organize and elect leaders. The leaders make speeches. The newspapers report what the speeches contain. The people read the papers, avoiding the speeches and confining themselves to baseball news. The representatives, perceiving this, do as they please. The people then elect new representatives. “DON’T BE ALARMED, SIR, HE WON'T EAT ANYTHING THAT HASN'T THE GOVERNMENT PURE FOOD STAMP ON IT” OWARD: All our lives we've had to support one member of my father’s family. Cowarp: Non compos or intellectual? 2ONGS FROM THE HEART