Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938),famous as typhoid Mary ,an immigrant woman working in New York City in the early 1900s, became the most famous symbol of infectious disease in the United States. But the true story behind “Typhoid Mary“ is more terrifying — and depressing — than you ever realized. She was the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the pathogen associated with typhoid fever.
llustration of Typhoid Mary breaking skulls into a skillet, circa 1909. (Credit: Fotosearch/Getty Images)
Facts about Typhoid Mary:
She was presumed to have infected 51 people.
Three of persons died, over the course of her career as a cook.
She was twice forcibly isolated by public health authorities and died after a total of nearly three decades in isolation.
She spread disease as a cook for affluent families.
A sleuthing sanitary engineer tracked down Typhoid Mary.
Typhoid Mary spent 26 years in forced isolation
Recent Research:
It’s only recently that a team of scientists at Stanford figured out the mechanics of how Mallon could be infected but asymptomatic. Macrophages, the immune cells that “eat” foreign bodies, are made aggressive by the inflammatory response early in an infection. After a few days of fighting the infection, the chemical stew that the macrophages inhabit recedes, and they become less aggressive. At that point typhoid bacteria can actually penetrate and live in the very cells that are meant to devour them. The ailment is silent and tough to treat, even now.
Mallon was also tough to treat, although the health service didn’t really attempt to make her comfortable. Mary was isolated on North Brother Island, a quarantine facility off the coast of New York. She was kept there for years, during which she was sometimes neglected, sometimes showed off to visiting interns of officials. She was forced to give 163 samples of various bodily substances to the doctors there, 120 of which tested positive for the bacteria. Because the bacteria were often found in her gallbladder, various doctors pressured her to have her gallbladder removed.
