How an Irish cook nearly wiped out all rich Americans: Typhoid Mary

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The twenties of the twenty-first century re-opened a long-standing debate about what is still paramount - the rights of the individual or concern for the general well-being. And how can we not recall the story of Typhoid Mary, which happened more than a hundred years ago, but is surprisingly intertwined with the current reality.

How at the beginning of the 20th century, next to an emigrant from Ireland, people got sick every now and then

Mary Mallon was born in 1869 in Ireland, in the town of Cookstown, County Tyrone. At the age of fifteen, she ended up in America, where she first lived with relatives, and a few years later she got a job as a cook in a family. In those years, up to two million US residents worked as servants, while the profession of a cook was considered one of the most prestigious. Apparently, Mary was a really good cook - she did not sit without work. The trouble is that literally every of the houses where Miss Mallon worked suffered a serious misfortune - households and servants were infected with typhoid fever.

Typhoid fever, a disease caused by the bacteria salmonella, struck nearly three and a half thousand New Yorkers in 1906 alone, of whom 639 died. First of all, residents of slums and emigrant quarters were infected: the reason was the use of contaminated food and contaminated water. The treatment was ineffective - antibiotics had not yet been invented at that time.

In seven houses where Mary Mallon worked, a typhoid epidemic began, family members and servants were sick, and the cook's involvement in caring for the sick only made the situation worse. Mary moved from one employer to another, and history repeated itself over and over again. They say the cook's signature dish was peach ice cream. This explains the massive infections, because during the heat treatment of products and the observance of hygiene measures, the causative agent of typhoid fever dies.

In 1906, Mary Mallon got a job with the family of a wealthy banker Charles Henry Warren - at that time he rented a mansion on Long Island near the summer residence of Theodore Roosevelt. Soon, six out of eleven household members fell ill with typhoid fever. The owner of the house, George Thompson, made a thorough examination of the pipes, plumbing, pumps and sewers, but did not find the source of the infection. Mary Mallon, meanwhile, went to work for a new family, at Walter Bowen's house on Park Avenue.

In the first month of her work, the maid became infected with typhoid fever, and after a little more time, the daughter of Bowena, she soon died. Since the recent history of the Warrens' home was still in the medical field of vision, they noticed something in common between the two foci, and it was the cook. Dr. George Soper, who would later play a fatal role in Mary Mallon's life, concluded that the source of infection in both cases was the woman who cooked the food.

First quarantine

When Soper came to Mary, she did not believe a single word of his. She feels great, she is not sick with any typhus, and that Irish emigrants in this country are treated without respect, so she is used to it, but with her, Mary Mallon, she will not allow such treatment. She flatly refused to take tests and, moreover, to go to the hospital, having kicked out the uninvited guest and, as follows from his recollections, threatening him with a fork. The next visit took place in the presence of the police, and Mallon was nevertheless detained, although she resisted arrest.

The survey revealed the source of the bacteria - in the gallbladder of Mary Mallon, and she herself was recognized as the first person in history to be a carrier of typhoid fever without any symptoms of the disease. Presumably, the woman was born infected - if her mother was sick during pregnancy - or contracted typhus in childhood. One way or another, and the continuation of Mallon's work in the kitchen threatened the further spread of the disease, and therefore "Typhoid Mary", as reporters had already christened her, was quarantined. It lasted three years.

Meanwhile, the sensational story was also picked up by the newspapermen. One of them, media mogul William Hirst, provided Mary Mallon with the opportunity to hire lawyers to sue her in custody. She did not believe in the story of typhoid fever, believing that in this way scores were settled with her. She lost the trial.

Lifetime quarantine on the island

But in 1910, Mary Mallon was released with the condition to strictly observe hygiene requirements, and most importantly, not to work in the kitchen anymore. This promise was broken. Taking a new name - Mary Brown, she again got a job as a cook. It is known that she worked in hotels, in a restaurant on Broadway, even in a sanatorium, but the exact list of those places where Typhoid Mary managed to manage is unknown. Data on the number of people infected with it varies, and the number of deaths may have reached fifty or even more. Due to the fact that after the first quarantine she worked under an assumed name, the exact number and characteristics of outbreaks near Mallon have not been established.

Finally Mary was detained and quarantined for life. Until her death in 1938, she lived on North Brother Island, where people with smallpox were brought in at the end of the 19th century. Mallon was demonized in the press - it was believed that she deliberately infected wealthy Americans. At the age of 63, Mary suffered a stroke, which is why she was partially paralyzed until her death, six years later she died of pneumonia.

Throughout her imprisonment, Mary Mallon suffered from loneliness and locked up life. She tried to find employment on the island, did the work of a nurse, and helped in the laboratory. Of course, she did not get married and did not give birth to children. The case of Mary Mallon caused then and continues to cause debate about the ethical component of forced quarantine. In Typhoid Mary's case, of course, her civil rights were violated, the woman's life was sacrificed for other lives. The term "Typhoid Mary" has become a meme, it is used when referring to people spreading infection and not taking precautions; in the history of medicine, her case was not the only one.

There is a dark joke about the story of Typhoid Mary that if her signature dish had been apple pie, everything could have turned out much better - after all, it is cooked in a hot oven. But Mary Mallon loved making ice cream, which the employers also enjoyed. However, this is not surprising, given the long history behind this dessert, and what path he went through. from dessert for Alexander the Great to “Eskimo pie”.