I AM JOE'S FEAR OF DISEASE:
INNER FRAME
The black rat, infested with fleas carrying bubonic plague.

Mercury vapor steam bath, used to treat syphilis in the 17th century—a cure that might be worse than the illness.

Barber/surgeon performing a bloodletting, once thought to be a cure-all but more often the cause of death.
The tapping cure for dropsy: a pipe is stuck into the body to tap diseased blood.

Another archaic “cure”: burning off tumors by pressing a hot coal on leg. Notice nurse picking his pocket during the patient’s agony.

Lice and begging leper.
Huber the Tuber, a 1940s children’s book from the artists’ childhood that his mother gave him when he was around 8 years old; tuberculosis destroying the human lung. Corky the Killer (22) is a sequel.
Syphilis spirochetes. 

					
Imaginary disease-carrying bug.

					

					
Mönckberg’s type of sclerosis.

					

					
Imaginary disease-carrying bug.

					

					
Purulent ejaculation from the urethral orifice.

					

					
Tse-tse fly.

					

					
Microaneurysms partially and completely thrombosed.

					
Kissing beetle, carrier of the fatal Chagas disease.

					
Degeneration of cells of the cerebral cortex.

				
				
				
				Lymphocytosis and monocytosis.
					




					
Tick carrying lyme disease.

					

					
Trichinosis

					

					
Mosquito carrying malaria, among other deadly diseases.

					
Bullous edema of the bladder, causing cancer.

					
Tick carrying Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

					
Erupting polyp.

					
Housefly, carrier of many diseases due to its predilection for walking in feces.

					
Unidentified disease.

				
			

			

				
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
			

			

				
				
				
			

			

				
				
				
					

						Pig with foot and mouth disease.

						
				
					

						Mad cow being served a cow’s head in a bucket. 

						
				
			

			

				
				
				
					

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