#1142 Who was Typhoid Mary?
Who was Typhoid Mary? She was a chef in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who was a carrier of typhoid and responsible for the deaths of several people. Someone who spreads diseases is often referred to as a “Typhoid Mary”, but many people probably don’t realize that Typhoid Mary was actually a real person. Her name was Mary Mallon and she was born in 1869 in Ireland. At the age of fifteen, she emigrated to New York with her family. She lived with her parents until she was old enough to work and then found a job as a domestic helper for a wealthy family. By 1900, she graduated to being their cook. Cooking paid considerably more than other domestic jobs and she was very happy with the arrangement. However, a few weeks after she became their cook, several members of the family came down with typhoid. Mary left their service and moved to another wealthy family, this time in Manhattan. Pretty soon, members of that family came down with typhoid. Mary moved again, and the same thing happened again. Between 1900 and 1907, she worked for 8 different families in New York and people in seven of those families came down with typhoid. The last family were a wealthy banking family in a town called Oyster Bay. Mary might have moved on and remained anonymous if it hadn’t been for that town. The owner of the house the banking family were renting was worried that rumors of typhoid would stop people from renting his houses, so he hired an investigator to work out where the typhoid was coming from. The investigator tracked Mary down and she was arrested. She hadn’t actually committed a crime, but she was arrested because she was a threat to public health. She was forced into a hospital and kept there for almost three years. She was tested multiple times while she was there and always tested positive for the bacterium that causes typhoid, Salmonella typhi. She was a carrier, without getting infected herself. When she cooked meals, she never washed her hands and she passed the bacteria into the food she was making. After three years, Mary was released, but was forced to sign a document saying that she wouldn’t cook for people anymore. Within a few years of being released, Mary was a cook again, and people started to get sick again. She worked in restaurants, hotels, and wherever she worked, typhoid epidemics would follow. Despite all of this, Mary Mallon never thought that she was the cause and she disagreed with all of the doctors. She just thought she was unlucky. The state disagreed and she was tracked down and locked up again in 1915. Sadly for her she was quarantined in a hospital on North Border Island, a small island in New York City’s East River, for the remainder of her life and died there in 1938. She became known as Typhoid Mary during her lifetime, a name given to her by the press. Not without reason, she didn’t like the name. Out of all the people she infected, 3 have been proven to have died, but the number could be much higher than that. Interestingly, it seems that Mary passed the bacteria to the people she was cooking for in a specialty dish of hers, ice cream with frozen peaches. The bacteria would be killed in cooked food, but not in cold ice cream. How could she be a carrier of typhoid and not get sick? Typhoid is caused when the Salmonella typhi bacteria gets into someone’s body. The bacteria are absorbed through the intestine and get into the blood. They rapidly start to multiply in the gut and also in the lymph nodes, spleen, liver, gallbladder, bone marrow, and blood. This triggers an immune response, which is why you get a fever and the other symptoms. The bacteria can destroy the lining of the gut and they cause a lot of pain. They can be killed with antibiotics, although there is a lot of resistance to antibiotics recently. If they are not killed, they can eat a whole through the intestines, which causes internal bleeding and other infections, that can be fatal. The bacteria are passed on through feces. They are in the gut and they get passed out. If feces end up contaminating a water source, or a food source, the bacteria can spread. Sometimes, a person can be sick and recover, but some of the bacteria stay hidden in their body. These bacteria don’t harm the host, but they multiply and still get passed out in the feces. If that person doesn’t wash their hands after going to the toilet, those bacteria can end up in food, and then in the person that eats the food. This is what happened with Mary Mallon. Typhoid Mary. The bacteria was hidden in her gallbladder and reproduced freely. She didn’t wash her hands and became a host and a super spreader. However, with the knowledge of germs that was available at the time, none of it is her fault and is just unfortunate. And this is what I learned today. - #321 How does a pressure cooker work? - #369 Why is New York called New York? - #763 When did ultra processed food start? - #425 How does an air fryer work? - #132 When did the Mafia come to America? Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_fever https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/typhoid-fever https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3959940 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_and_South_Brother_Islands_(New_York_City) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-typhoid-mary https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17730-typhoid-fever Image By Unknown artist - According to http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-702b,0,3017376.photo?coll=ny-lihistory-navigation this is an illustration that appeared in 1909 in The New York American. (According to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/typhoid/mary.html, the precise date was June 20, 1909) (Same date given in New York Public Library Digital Collections under: "Typhoid Mary")., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=689799 Read the full article
