Diario La Nación
- The Dancer
- Oh! Margarita
- The FAT Will Become THIN
This partial reading of La Nación, the Santiago daily, for 30 October 1926 covers three items from the front page. A short story titled "La Bailarina" opens by introducing its hero, Evaristo Prudent, a member of the Institute of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres and of several scientific societies, who had written a famous study of ancient Egypt and was celebrated in intellectual circles. A cartoon panel bylined John Held Jr has its heroine Margarita recommend the cheap express lunches at the Fancy. A partly cut-off advertisement promises that fat people will become thin in three months with the "Hyperthermán" vaccine of a famous Dresden institute.
This is a partial reading of three items from the front page; other items, including the "El Tani" cigarette advertisement, are not translated. The page is photographed as an open bound volume, so the edges of the columns are cut off. The story's author is only partly legible ("Cuento por H." … "CLAIR."), the first letter of the heading "A MODA ACTUAL" is missing, and the left part of the "GORDOS" advertisement is cut off, so its translated text begins mid-sentence. The supplied OCR was badly garbled, and the text was read visually from the image.
Translation
The Dancer
Evaristo Prudent, a member of the Institute of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres and of several scientific societies, and the author of a famous study of ancient Egypt, enjoyed great renown in intellectual circles.
Oh! Margarita
MARGARITA says that for a good, inexpensive lunch, there is nothing like the express lunches at the Fancy.
The FAT Will Become THIN
three months with the "HYPERTHERMAN" Vaccine of the famous Dresden Institute
Context
La Nación in 1926: founding, sections and foreign culture
La Nación was founded on 14 January 1917 by a group of liberal parliamentarians led by Eliodoro Yáñez, and it made its name with a modern, information-led model divided into specialised sections. Memoria Chilena notes that its foreign news and its sports pages were the most popular with readers, and in the 1920s the writer Juan Emar brought the European avant-garde into the paper through columns sent from France, "Notas desde París" and "La Nación en París". The front page of 30 October 1926 shows the same mix of imported culture and commerce: a story about a learned member of an institute of inscriptions, a cartoon signed by an American illustrator, and advertisements for a Santiago lunch counter and a Dresden slimming "vaccine". The paper's independence was nearing its end. In 1927 the dictatorship of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo expropriated La Nación and turned it into the official organ of the Chilean state, so this issue appeared the year before Yáñez lost control of it.
John Held Jr and the Margy strips
John Held Jr, born in 1889, was one of the best-known American magazine illustrators of the 1920s, famous for angular cartoons of flappers and their boyfriends dancing, driving and playing sport. Besides his magazine work he wrote and drew newspaper comic strips, Oh! Margy and its sequel Merely Margy, and in 1927 Vanity Fair praised him as a syndicated artist who had kept his flair for drawing and satire. The Santiago panel carries the English byline "BY JOHN HELD JR" and the title "Oh! Margarita", which reads as a Spanish rendering of Margy. On this page, however, the heroine is speaking advertising copy: she tells readers that nothing beats the express lunches at the Fancy. The panel therefore shows a Santiago advertiser borrowing the face of a fashionable American Jazz Age character. The sources consulted do not record how Held's work reached Chile or who wrote the Spanish text.
Chile's health authorities and the Hyperthermán "vaccine"
By 1926 Chile had built up a state public-health apparatus. The Instituto de Higiene had introduced the first diagnostic methods and begun manufacturing vaccines locally in 1897; the Sanitary Code was promulgated as Law No. 3,385 in 1918, and its Dirección de Sanidad worked in practice as a ministry of health; six years later a Ministry of Hygiene, Assistance and Social Welfare was created under Alejandro del Río. Against that background, the advertisement calls a slimming treatment a "vaccine" and attributes it to a "famous Dresden Institute", lending the product the prestige of vaccination and of German science. The promise that fat people would become thin in three months is the advertiser's claim. The sources consulted describe the institutions but say nothing about how products such as Hyperthermán were controlled in Chile.
Original
LA BAILARINA
Evaristo Prudent, miembro del Instituto de Inscripciones y Bellas Letras y de varias sociedades cientificas, autor de un famoso estudio sobre el antiguo Egipto, gozaba de gran celebridad en los centros intelectuales.
Oh! Margarita
MARGARITA dice que para almorzar bien y a poco costo, nada hay como los express lunch del Fancy.
Los GORDOS quedarán FLACOS
tres meses con la Vacuna " HYPERTHERMAN " del famoso Instituto de Dresde
Source: Source: Internet Archive