Doctor Curmudgeon® I Don’t Get It!
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By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAFP
It was not the proverbial dark and stormy night.
It was a leisurely Sunday morning spent sipping coffee and actually reading the newspapers.
All was quiet except for the occasional comments shared between Doctor Curmudgeon® and her husband; and the crisp, happy rustle of the Miami Herald as pages were turned.
“I just don’t get it,” said the small physician as she shoved her folded newspaper across the table to her husband. “I just don’t get this cartoon!”
Preferring to return to the editorial he had been reading, he stared at it for the requisite one and one half minutes, furrowed his brow and returned the page to the annoyed physician.
“I don’t, either.”
Harumphing, the doctor stared at the cartoon for a few more seconds and then began to wonder how it had all started. She had a few favorite cartoonists, like Jim Morin and looked forward to this pithy method of political commentary
From what she could glean, it appeared that it was good old Benny Franklin’s newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette that published the first political cartoon on May 9 back in 1754 a bit before Doctor Curmudgeon® even entered medical school.
Now that was a cartoon she could immediately understand.
It showed a very unhappy snake, with its poor body chopped up into a bunch of pieces. And the caption was “Join or Die.”
Simple.
To the point.
It was part of an editorial about the disunited state of the colonies.
The snake was divided into 8 pieces, which represented the eight colonies. His math was not incorrect, because he lumped the four colonies of New England into one segment of the snake. Georgia was left out because it was a newer colony and could not be able to do much to help the revolutionary cause. Pennsylvania and Delaware counted as one because they shared a governor and thus Delaware was just considered part of Pennsylvania
“Join or Die” appeared as part of an editorial that Ben Franklin wrote about the “disunited state” of the colonies. It prophesied doom for the colonies if they didn’t unite- with the French and Indian war on the way.
As the publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, Ben wrote an article which said:
““The Confidence of the French in this Undertaking seems well-grounded on the present disunited State of the British Colonies, and the extreme Difficulty of bringing so many different Governments and Assemblies to agree in any speedy and effectual Measures for our common Defence and Security,”
The cartoon especially hit home, because everyone could understand it. Many people at that time were not literate…but “join or Die” made its point.
And it was a common superstition that if a snake were cut in half, the bits could join up again.
Now that was a cartoon that even Doctor Curmudgeon® could immediately get!
Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”
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