SubscribeCancer and Syphilis in the Metro
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When he arrived in Paris in 1930, Henry Miller found the walls of his new city plastered with lurid posters calling for public vigilance against the scourges of syphilis and cancer:
In every Metro station there are grinning skulls that greet you with “Défendez-vous contre la syphilis!” Wherever there are walls, there are posters with bright venomous crabs heralding the approach of cancer. No matter where you go, no matter what you touch, there is cancer and syphilis.1
Miller was fascinated with the posters and the depiction of the crab in particular may have been an inspiration for the title of his novel, Tropic of Cancer. Through these early days in Paris, Miller was under the sway of Michael Fraenkel’s ‘death theme’ and the pages of his novel are littered with references to death and disease.
The syphilis poster above was created between 1924 and 1930 and warns that the disease is contagious and may lead to blindness, paralysis, ataxia and insanity. The crab poster counsels that cancer can be killed if treated early. It was launched in 1930 to coincide with the first national defense-against-cancer week.
Notes
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, 189
The example of the syphilis poster was found at the Wellcome Library in London.
The cancer poster was found at the Institut Curie in Paris.
The June 2005 issue of Le Journal de l’Institut Curie contains an article by Nathalie Huchette providing further information on the publicity campaign behind the cancer poster (PDF - see page 19).
Karl Orend wrote in Nexus, volume 5 (page 148) that Miller was influenced by a cancer poster “showing a black and a red crab fighting each other.” I assume the above poster is the one he had in mind.
