Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, was a healthy carrier of typhoid fever who infected 53 people, causing three deaths. She worked as a cook and refused to admit her role in spreading the disease. Carriers can transmit the bacteria through poor hygiene when handling food and drink. Mary was quarantined for three years and released on the condition that she never worked with food again, but she resumed work as a cook under a different name. She was forcibly quarantined for the rest of her life and died in 1938. Mary is now a symbol of prejudice against Irish immigrants and the working class.
Mary Mallon, known as Typhoid Mary, was the first healthy person in the United States to be identified as having typhoid fever. Mary worked as a cook and unknowingly infected 53 different people: three of whom died of typhus. She became famous, in part because she was the first healthy carrier of typhus, but mainly because she adamantly refused to admit her role in spreading the disease and did not take the necessary precautions to prevent its spread.
It is now known that typhoid fever can be transmitted by food or water that has been handled by a carrier. Carriers are usually healthy people who have survived typhus and have no further symptoms, but still have the typhoid bacteria surviving in their bodies. In the case of typhoid Mary, she may actually have been born with typhoid, as her mother was infected. Carriers can transmit the bacteria due to poor hygiene when handling food and drink.
Mary Mallon made a living as a cook in the New York area in the early 1900s. Between 1900 and 1907, she infected 22 people with typhoid fever, resulting in one death. At times, she Maria di lei would take care of people in her family who fell ill with typhus, unknowingly making them even sicker. Typhoid Mary changed jobs frequently, as her employers and their families fell ill.
New York health worker George Soper, hired by the owner of a home where Mary had worked, investigated that specific typhus outbreak. Soper speculated that Mary could be a possible carrier of typhoid fever. When he explained to Mary Typhoid that it might be spreading typhoid, she absolutely refused to cooperate with his requests for stool and urine samples. She said she had negative test results for typhoid, although she may have been in remission at this time.
Soper continued to try to convince Mary Mallon that she was a carrier of typhus, but at the time the idea that a healthy person could spread the disease was not well known and seemed unlikely. Soper published his findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1906. Typhoid Mary became convinced that she had been molested and persecuted for no reason. She was soon taken into custody.
The New York health inspector found typhoid Mary to be a carrier. She was quarantined for three years in a hospital on an island off New York City, and released when she promised never to work with food again. As soon as she was released, however, she resumed work as a cook, under the name of Mary Brown. She was again forcibly quarantined, for the rest of her life, becoming something of a celebrity and giving interviews.
Mary Mallon died of pneumonia in 1938 at the age of 69, six years after being paralyzed by a stroke. An autopsy was conducted, finding live typhoid bacteria present in her gallbladder. Many historians regard Mary as a symbol of the prejudice that existed at the time against Irish immigrants and the working class in general. “Typhoid Mary” is now used as an umbrella term for someone who is a danger to the public because she carries a dangerous disease.
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