callaway, can you tell me about mary mallon, and why at one time she was the most feared woman in america?
Interestingly enough, I saw a television show about her yesterday.
She was a carrier of typhoid fever, even though she was never sick.
She was a cook, so she unwittingly transmitted typhoid fever to quite a few people before she was quarantined.
At that time, there were no antibiotics. On the island where she was quarantined, the doctors wanted to remove her gallbladder, which can be a focus of typhoid fever bacteria, but she refused the surgery. She never believed that she could be making people sick when she had never been sick herself.
When Mary Mallon was eventually released from quarantine, she was set up with a job as a laundress, which would not have caused people to be infected by her, but it was very difficult work at the lowest eschelon of domestic laborers. A cook was much easier work and much higher status. Since she did not believe that she made people sick, she sought a job as a cook in a hospital, and infected many more people before she was quarantined again, this time for the rest of her life.
Mary Mallon was also known as Typhoid Mary.
