Mary mallon

1st quarantine 1907 – infected 22 people and caused death of a young girl

Permanently quarantined 1915 – 51 people infected (at least 3 have died)

No asymptomatic carriers have been identified at that time, mallon never believed she was source of
outbreak.

When Mary Mallon was first quarantined in 1907,

doctors determined she had already infected 22 people
and caused the death of a young girl.
By the time she was permanently quarantined, in 1915,
she had infected 51 people, at least three of whom had died.
No asymptomatic carriers of typhoid
had ever been identified at that time.
So Mallon, who was always healthy,
never believed she was the source of the outbreak.
Nonetheless, public health officials
repeatedly traced the frequent typhoid outbreaks right back
to Mary.
And despite a lifetime of resistance,
Mallon eventually wound up in permanent quarantine.
The first vaccine for typhoid was created in 1896.
While it was a great help to soldiers
who were at high risk of contracting the illness,
it never became widespread enough to be of much value
to the general public.
So in the early 1900s, the disease
was still extremely dangerous and had
a mortality rate of about 10%.
The symptoms of typhoid are not pleasant.
One to three weeks after infection, a person suffering
from typhoid typically contracted a dangerously high
fever.
This was quickly followed by nausea, vomiting, muscle pain,
and headaches.
Following that, a distinctive rash
would appear on the victim's chest.
If no treatment was administered by this point,
The next phase would usually be intestinal bleeding,
leading to blood clots under the skin.
In some of the most dangerous cases,
the abdomen would then be distended.
In 1906, a homeowner whose family
had endured a particularly violent and seemingly
inexplicable outbreak of typhoid hired a New York State
Department of Health sanitary engineer named George Soper
to figure out what happened.
Soper knew the incubation period of the salmonella bacteria
that causes typhoid was exactly three weeks.
Starting his investigation by examining the servants,
his suspicions quickly fell on an Irish immigrant
who had been hired as a cook precisely three
weeks before everyone got sick.
That person was Mary Mallon.
Born in 1868, in what is today Northern Ireland,
Mary came to the United States in the year
of either 1883 or 1884.
She started off living with an aunt and uncle
and found work as a cook for well-to-do families.
Soper ran a background check on Mallon
and quickly saw that typhoid victims seemed
to appear wherever she went.
He also noticed she had a habit of changing jobs
and names after each outbreak.
Putting two and two together, Soper figured he had his woman.
Soper questioned Mary and raised the possibility
that she could be the carrier that was
causing the typhoid outbreaks.
Despite the evidence, Mallon denied Soper's allegations
and resisted testing.
No matter how many outbreaks followed her career,
Mallon steadfastly refused to admit that she
was the carrier of typhoid.
Instead, she would quietly slip away after each outbreak,
change her name slightly, and find a new job
with a new family.
Whether Mary actually understood she
was a carrier of the disease and what
is to be gleaned from her behavior is unclear.
Her habit of changing her name could
imply she was trying to deceive people into hiring her,
because she knew she was sick.
Or it could simply be a person's innocent attempt
to avoid press attention.
Typhoid, at the time, was typically
associated with poor hygiene and, by extension, poor people.
As such, New York's health officials
were surprised to encounter the illness
in wealthy and upper middle class households.
Servants were put under the microscope, so to speak.
And eventually, they got around to Mary.
Her poor hygiene did turn out to be an issue.
When first questioned by health officials in 1907,
Mallon told them she didn't see any point in washing her hands
before she handled food.
This might sound reckless to us today.
But in 1907, the theory of germs was relatively new.
And Mary didn't seem to believe sickness could be transferred
by physical contact.
That being the case, she wouldn't see
why handwashing was important.
Scary stuff to think about.
On one occasion, in 1907, Dr. Soper
came to Mallon's workplace to take samples.
Mary took this intrusion about as well as you'd expect,
which is to say she completely refused to cooperate.
In fact, one version of the story
holds that Mallon snatched up a meat cleaver
and chased Dr. Soper out of the house.
Other versions say it was a rolling pin or a meat fork.
But no matter what kitchen utensil it was,
the gist is always the same.
It took several more tries before authorities
were able to get the goods on Mallon.
And she never became more cooperative.
Soper eventually planned on having her forcibly restrained
so samples could be taken.
But before he was able to carry out his plan,
the authorities intervened.
Even then, Mary wouldn't give and their attempt
to capture her culminated in a three-hour foot chase.
Mary was apparently pretty fast on her feet.
Despite an all out effort to avoid it,
Mallon was finally apprehended and taken into custody in 1907.
Doctors took urine, stool, and tissue
samples, which eventually confirmed
that Mallon was carrying the typhoid bacteria, this,
despite the fact that she displayed no symptoms herself.
By all accounts, she seemed to be a picture of health.
With no cure available, health officials
had to find another course of action to protect the public.
Mallon was deemed a threat to society.
And it was decided that she would be quarantined.
Though she fought every step of the way,
she was eventually confined to a single occupancy cottage
at Riverside Hospital for Communicable Diseases, located
on New York's North Brother Island.
When confronted by reporters, Mallon
said she believed she was being treated unjustly
and she continued to insist that there was
no way she could have typhoid.
Nonetheless, Mary's case attracted so much attention
she was labeled Typhoid Mary in a 1908
issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association
and the name stuck.
Mary Mallon wasn't America's first typhoid carrier,
but she was the first asymptomatic carrier
ever identified.
This means that she was able to carry and spread
the disease without ever showing any of its symptoms herself.
That sounds familiar.
This was considered a hugely important scientific discovery.
But that being the case, there was no existing protocol
that addressed the situation.
While the authorities did have the power
to forcibly quarantine anyone who
posed a threat to public health, and they knew Mary was somehow
mixed up in all the typhoid outbreaks,
they couldn't prove how or why she was involved.
Mary didn't take kindly to the attention.
She angrily claimed to be a victim of a government
conspiracy.
And at some points, the public even seemed to agree with her.
Regardless, authorities knew she had to be the carrier
and were desperate to stop the trail of sickness and death
she left in her wake.
Scientists of Mallon's time were never
able to figure out how she could carry
the bacteria that caused typhoid without showing symptoms.
But in 2013, a group of researchers at Stanford
solved the riddle.
To put it as simply as possible, the salmonella bacteria
behind the spread of typhoid has the ability
to hide in immune cells known as macrophages
and hijack their metabolism for their own purposes.
If this hijacking is successful, the person in question
can spread the bacteria while themselves appearing healthy.
In 1910, Mary Mallon was released
from her first quarantine, under the condition that she would
never again work as a cook.
She took a job doing laundry, but it didn't last long.
She left the position after a short time
and returned to cooking for families.
The authorities got back on Mary's trail,
but she managed to avoid them by frequently
changing jobs and names.
Finally, in 1915, Sloan Maternity Hospital in New York
had an outbreak of 25 new typhoid cases.
Mallon was discovered working there as a cook
and was quickly arrested and returned to quarantine.
By 1915, Mallon was infamously known to all as Typhoid Mary.
She had been recaptured and placed back in quarantine
at North Brother Island in New York.
Her life there was not pleasant.
Whether due to her intransigence with the doctors and staff
or the facility's complete inexperience at handling cases
like Mary's, it's known that she was treated inhumanely.
The initial tests performed discovered
that Mallon gallbladder was riddled with salmonella
bacteria.
They wanted to remove the organ during her first quarantine,
but she refused to allow it.
They tried again during her second quarantine.
And once again, Mary managed to avoid the procedure.
She wasn't able to avoid everything though.
Over her remaining years at the facility,
doctors took over 160 biological samples from her body,
all against her wishes.
As if that wasn't indignity enough,
Mallon was often shown off to journalists and interns
as a specimen.
When she wasn't being prodded or exploited,
she was being neglected.
As her interactions were severely
limited by the doctors, she was only
allowed to wash bottles in a laboratory.
Dubbed "the most dangerous woman in America"
Mary Mallon had finally worn out whatever goodwill
she had left with the authorities.
Deciding that she simply could not
be trusted to give up cooking or follow any sort of prevention
guidelines, New York state public health officials
decided she had to be quarantined
for the remainder of her life.
That's right.
For life.
She spent her remaining years in virtual isolation
at the quarantine cottage on North Brother Island.
Mary died in 1938.
And though reports on the matter conflict,
it is believed she likely passed away from pneumonia.
It's not known how many cases of typhoid
she spread in her lifetime, but estimates
suggest she caused no less than 51 cases,
resulting in three fatalities.
While the discovery of an asymptomatic typhoid carrier
was big news in 1906, by the time Mary died in 1938,
it was old hat.
By that point, over 400 other healthy carriers
had been identified.
Yet according to the surviving records,
not a single one of these others received
the same forced confinement that Mary Mallon did.
The jarring discrepancy raised important philosophical
questions about epidemic and public health protocols.
Some began to wonder whether forcibly confining
someone for the greater good of society at large
was justifiable.
Others pointed out that it was Mary's lack of honesty
and refusal to cooperate that merited such severe treatment.
These issues are still relevant in modern epidemiology.
So what do you think?
Do you feel any sympathy for Typhoid Mary?
Or do you think she got what she deserved?
Let us know in the comments below.
And while you're at it, check out some of these other videos
from our weird history.
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