Home > Science Fact Finder > Health and Medicine - Who Was Typhoid Mary?

Health and Medicine - Who Was Typhoid Mary?

Who was Typhoid Mary?

Mary Mallon (1855-1938), also known as Typhoid Mary, was a cook who lived in New York City at the turn of the century. She was identified as a chronic (continuous) carrier of the typhoid bacilli (spore-producing bacteria). Immune to the disease herself, Typhoid Mary was the cause of at least three deaths and fifty-one cases of typhoid fever.

Once discovered to be a typhoid carrier, Typhoid Mary was confined to an isolation center on North Brother Island, near the Bronx, from 1907 to 1910. The New York City Health Department released her after this confinement on the condition that she never accept food-related employment. Soon thereafter, however, an epidemic of typhoid fever occurred among patrons of two restaurants where Mary had worked as a cook. In 1914, authorities returned her to North Brother Island. Typhoid Mary remained there until her death from a stroke in 1938.

Sources: Dowling,...

[The entire page is 187 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass