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 Typhoid Mary: Quarantine before Ours

By: Anya Niven

           

As Covid-19 is prevalent in America and much of the world, many are making comparisons to other pandemics and epidemics in history. Although not the most popularly referenced, the disease typhoid fever and its outbreaks had many similarities to (especially the early stages of) the coronavirus pandemic. One of the biggest outbreaks of typhoid fever occurred in New York City from 1906-1907, and one woman became a symbol for the disease, even gaining the nickname, “Typhoid Mary”. 

 

Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant who came to the United States at age 15, had lived most of her life in the U.S. and had recently become a home chef for various wealthy families in the New York City area. Mallon was also an asymptomatic carrier of the bacteria Salmonella typhi, which causes typhoid fever, meaning she carried and could pass on typhoid fever to others, though she would never herself have symptoms of the disease. Due to the nature of her work paired with the lack of sanitary standards for chefs at the time, Mallon began unintentionally spreading the disease to her employers and other members of their households in the timeframe that she was working for them. It is assumed that Typhoid Mary spread typhoid fever to about 122 New Yorkers, 5 of whom died directly as a result. Although, as seen in our current pandemic, infecting one person directly may infect many people indirectly, there is no complete answer on how much Mallon impacted the death toll of almost 26,000 between 1906 and 1907 alone.

 

 Fortunately, for the general population of New York, investigators of the typhoid outbreak eventually noticed a pattern in many of the afflicted families; Mary Mallon was the home chef for many of the families and they had been eating food prepared by her. The New York Department of Health eventually aimed to track down Mallon to test her for the disease. Mary avoided the department, first threatening one investigator with a fork and then running away from the NYDOH for 5 hours before she was caught. After she was tested and found to have the typhoid pathogen in her blood, she was moved to a quarantine facility on a small island outside of the Bronx. After being held there for 3 years, she was released and promised to remove herself from the food industry and not work as a home chef any longer. However, Mallon was found working as a chef in a New York hospital just five years later. Mallon’s second apprehension was less dramatic, though it ended much worse for her. Mary Mallon was sent back to the isolated facility and forced to stay there, with only the companionship of a dog for the last 23 years of her life. Although the mostly worldwide quarantine of early 2020 seems to pale in comparison to Typhoid Mary’s story, the many similarities between the two highlight that some things, in terms of public health, have not changed within the past century.

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-frightening-legacy-of-typhoid-mary-180954324/

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/long-view-tragedy-typhoid-mary

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