Mary Mallon

[1][2] She was forcibly quarantined twice by authorities, the second time for the remainder of her life because she persisted in working as a cook and thereby exposed others to the disease.

Immediately after the outbreak began, Mallon left and relocated to Tuxedo Park,[15] where she was hired by George Kessler.

Two weeks later, the laundry worker in his household was infected and taken to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center, where her case of typhoid was the first in a long time.

[10] In August 1906, Mallon began a job in Oyster Bay on Long Island with the family of a wealthy New York banker, Charles Elliot Warren.

The landlord, understanding that it would be difficult to rent a house with the reputation of having typhoid, hired several independent experts to find the source of infection.

[13] Soper first met Mallon in the kitchen of the Bownes' Park Avenue penthouse and accused her of spreading the disease.

[24] Soper notified the New York City Health Department, whose investigators realized that Mallon was a typhoid carrier.

After the publication of Soper's article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Mallon attracted extensive media attention and received the nickname "Typhoid Mary".

For example, Milton J. Rosenau and Charles V. Chapin both argued that she just had to be taught to carefully treat her condition and ensure that she would not transmit the typhoid to others.

She was obliged to give samples for analysis three times a week, but for six months was not allowed to visit an eye doctor, even though her eyelid was paralyzed and she had to bandage it at night.

[25] After 2 years and 11 months of Mallon's quarantine, Eugene H. Porter, the New York State Commissioner of Health, decided that disease carriers should no longer be quarantined and that Mallon could be freed if she agreed to stop working as a cook and take reasonable efforts to avoid transmitting typhoid to others.

On February 19, 1910, Mallon said she was "prepared to change her occupation (that of a cook), and would give assurance by affidavit that she would upon her release take such hygienic precautions as would protect those with whom she came in contact, from infection.

She used fake surnames like Breshof or Brown, and accepted jobs as a cook against the explicit instructions of health authorities.

No agencies that hired servants for affluent families would offer her employment, so for the next five years, she worked in a number of kitchens in restaurants, hotels, and spa facilities.

The articles at first mentioned how Josephine Baker claimed Mallon attacked her and the other doctors with forks, and came at them fighting and swearing.

Stories that once celebrated the public health department and legal system eventually became sympathetic to Mallon and the events she supposedly encountered.

[1][13][49] Soper wrote, however, that there was no autopsy, a claim cited by other researchers to assert a conspiracy to calm public opinion after her death.

[1] Other sources attribute at least three deaths to contact with Mallon, but because of health officials' inability to persuade her to cooperate, the exact number is not known.

[1]Two scholarly sources combined to provide this conclusion: This case highlighted the problematic nature of the subject and the need for an enhanced medical and legal-social treatment model aimed at improving the status of disease carriers and limiting their impact on society.

[53]Other healthy typhoid carriers identified in the first quarter of the 20th century include Tony Labella, an Italian immigrant, presumed to have caused more than 100 cases (with five deaths); an Adirondack guide dubbed "Typhoid John", presumed to have infected 36 people (with two deaths); and Alphonse Cotils, a restaurateur and bakery owner.

[54] The health technology of the era did not have a completely effective solution: there were not any antibiotics to fight the infection, and gallbladder removal was a dangerous, sometimes fatal operation.

Some modern specialists claim that typhoid bacteria can become integrated in macrophages and then reside in intestinal lymph nodes or the spleen.

Historians frequently discuss the argument of Mallon knowing that she was infecting her clients with typhoid based on the frequency of the disease being present after her departure.

They also cite the argument that antibiotics did not exist at this time and ten percent of those affected by Mallon carrying the infection died.

[57] By this argument Mallon could be considered a murderer of those ten percent of people if she knew she was a carrier of the disease, and would be a justification for her arrest.

[58] Mallon was the first person found to be an asymptomatic carrier of the typhoid bacterium, and this caused the health officials to have little to no idea of how to deal with her.

[61] Mallon was portrayed by Melissa McMeekin in season one of the television series The Knick,[62] in a somewhat fictionalised account of her initial infection of countless wealthy households.

[63] Associated with Mallon's legacy with disease, the fictional artifact had the ability to transfer illness between individuals holding the knife simultaneously.

Mallon (foreground) in a hospital bed.
Poster depiction of "Typhoid Mary" (1909).
A historical poster warning against acting like Typhoid Mary.