On display at an Old Havana pharmacy is this nineteenth-century skeleton, standing upright in a box, next to a beautiful porcelain water distiller. Although visited by many tourists who find such displays quaint, this pharmacy is rarely stocked with the basic medicines that Cubans often have to buy through prescription because they are not readily available or affordable in the island-only currency that the government uses to pay the citizens (most of whom work for it). Dark humor in Cuba, however, always abounds. People often remarked that the skeleton did not need a name since he was, quite simply, the last customer. Havana, 2016. Photograph by Matthew Joseph, Ph.D.
