“Oh, Poor Thyphoid Mary!”
Mary Mallon was an Irish immigrant who migrated to the United States as a teenager in the 1880s. She worked as a cook for wealthy families in New York, and within two weeks of her first employment, residents of the house where she worked started to develop the symptoms of typhoid.
She changed jobs several times, moving from household to household, leaving typhoid in her wake wherever she went.
Although she appeared to be in perfect health, a public health investigation identified Mary as the first person in the United States to be an asymptomatic carrier of Salmonella Typhi – the bacteria that causes typhoid.
It is estimated that 1-6% of people infected with S. Typhi become chronic, asymptomatic carriers like Mary. The bacteria preferred hides out in human bloodstream and intestines, causing no illness to the host but enabling the bacteria to replicate and shed through their feces.
In Mary’s case, this was especially problematic because of her role as a cook. Even though she felt fine, her feces was full of highly contagious typhoid bacteria. Like everyone, she got small, invisible amounts of feces on her hands when she used the restroom.
She then used her hands to make food, spreading the bacteria as an unwanted ingredient into the food and mouths of the families for whom she cooked.
Because the high temperatures of hot foods likely would have killed the bacteria, doctors linked her disease-spreading ability to one of Mary’s most popular dessert dishes: ice cream with raw peaches that she cut by hand.
Typhoid Mary’s story is a tragic one, not only because people suffered and died, but because the solution was so simple. Mary should have washed her hands. Now we know enough to understand the importance of handwashing, preventable food- and water-borne infections, including typhoid.
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