Typhoid Mary
Below is a MRR and PLR article in category Health Fitness -> subcategory Medicine.
Typhoid Mary
Summary
Mary Mallon, famously known as "Typhoid Mary," was the first recorded "healthy carrier" of an infectious disease in the New World. Her story highlights the challenges faced in controlling infectious diseases in the early 20th century.
Article
Mary Mallon became notorious as the first recorded "healthy carrier" of an infectious disease in the New World. Over the first two decades of the 20th century, more than 100 people annually were identified as "healthy carriers" of typhoid in New York alone.
Mallon infected 47 people, including 11 members of a single family and their staff, leading to three deaths. In comparison, another carrier, Tony Labella, infected 122 people, resulting in five deaths. Despite this, Mallon's nickname, "Typhoid Mary," became synonymous with fear and dread in early 1900s New York City. This fiery Irish immigrant cook was immune to the disease, yet she spread it through the food she prepared.
In 1906, private investigators failed to identify the epidemic's source, but civil engineer George Soper traced it back to the 37-year-old Mallon. Confronted with suspicions and requests for samples, she reacted aggressively, threatening Soper and later lunging at police with a knife. After being found hiding on a neighbor's property, she was eventually subdued.
Efforts to cure her with treatments like Hexamethylenamin, laxatives, Urotropin, and brewer's yeast were unsuccessful. In 1907, health officials quarantined her for three years. She was released in February 1910 after promising not to cook for others, to follow hygiene rules, to provide regular fecal samples, and to inform health authorities of any address changes.
Mallon sued the New York City Board of Health in 1909, asserting her innocence. She pointed out that private lab tests consistently showed her samples were clean, while the department's tests found them mostly infected.
She declared:
"This contention that I am a perpetual menace in the spread of typhoid germs is not true. My own doctors say I have no typhoid germs. I am an innocent human being. I have committed no crime and I am treated like an outcast - a criminal. It is unjust, outrageous, uncivilized. It seems incredible that in a Christian community a defenseless woman can be treated in this manner."
Despite this, she lost the case. Comparatively, Alphonse Cotils, another carrier and owner of a restaurant and bakery, faced only a reprimand for breaking similar promises.
In 1911, typhoid vaccines became available, but few opted for them due to the disease's low 10% fatality rate.
However, Mallon broke her promises in 1915. Using the alias "Ms. Brown," she worked as a cook at Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan, where she infected mothers and their newborns, resulting in 25 cases and two deaths.
Mallon spent the remainder of her life?"23 years?"in quarantine at Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island. There, she lived with her dog and served as a nurse, hospital aide, and lab technician. After suffering a massive stroke in 1932, she was transferred to the children's ward, where she remained until her death in 1938.
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