ABSTRACT
This chapter historicizes the interrelation between animated films and puppet theater in producing the main discursive practices of health propaganda for children and youth. We explore the puppet play, Bacilínek, which adopted the main features of early health animation and became emblematic of Czechoslovak health propaganda in the early 1920s. Our aim is to follow the inception of the “magical contagion” genre in health propaganda as a main pathway of involving children in desirable activities related to health and prevention of diseases, which has persisted until now. We then interpret the persistent promotion of Bacilínek at the national and international levels as a part of the cultural war between health propaganda and anti-scientism, embedding health propaganda for children in interwar Czechoslovakia in the long-term contest between Czech and German puppet theater.
