"TYPHOID MARY" - QUARANTINE LIFER


MARY MALLON
(23 Sep 1869 – 11 Nov 1938)

Covid19 times made us familiar with the term "superspreader." This is a real story of a "superspreader" over a century ago, of Ms. Mary Mallon, believed to have infected over 100 people with Typhoid Fever, with 3 fatalities if not more. A case of an asymptomatic Typhoid Carrier...

A teenaged immigrant to New York from Ireland, Mary being an exceptionally good cook enabled her to make a comfortable living by entering the kitchens of the affluent and elite. Peach ice-cream was her speciality, and her undoing as well...

An isolated outbreak of typhoid in the summer house of a wealthy banker in Oyster Bay area in August 1906 made him hire a "sanitary engineer" to trace the source. To cut a long story short, the peach ice-cream was identified as the "item" through which the "superspreader" but asymptomatic Mary had transferred the infection to the affected...

Quarantined on North Brother Island for two years, Mary was released in 1910 on condition of changing her vocation. But with a changed name she defaulted in 1915 at Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan, infecting the staff and patients. This time Mary was sentenced to isolated quarantine for life on the Island. With a stroke in 1932, Mary passed away in 1938...

It was this day in 1915 when Mary received her life sentence. It makes one think about the predicament of the then officials, duty bound to handle deemed infection carriers...

Mary was perhaps a victim of multiple problems of her times. In 1906 it must be noted that with no antibacterials or vaccines available, she in the minds of doctors and authorities posed a lethal health hazard...

Quite possibly the hysteria about diseases, the lack of health awareness, the ambition of doctors and authorities, gender, ethnicity and class too must have tilted the scales against Mary...

All the same, for Mary a forced isolation for around three decades must have been truly heart-wrenching, perhaps inhumane as well...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/typhoid-marys-life-sentence-quarantine

🙏🙏


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