Mary Mallon

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Typhus Mary in a newspaper illustration from 1909

Mary Mallon (born September 23, 1869 in Cookstown , Northern Ireland , † November 11, 1938 on North Brother Island , United States ), known as Typhoid Mary (Typhus Mary), was the first person in the United States to be considered not to be sick A carrier of typhus was identified as a so-called permanent excretor . Mallon immigrated from Ireland in 1883.

cook

Mary Mallon worked as a cook in the New York City area between 1900 and 1907 . During that time, she infected 53 people with typhoid, three of whom died. In 1900, Mallon had been cooking in a house in Mamaroneck for less than two weeks when the residents fell ill with typhus. The following year she moved to Manhattan , where members of the family she cooked for developed fever and diarrhea and the laundry woman died. She then worked for a lawyer until seven of the eight people living in the household fell ill with typhus. Mallon cared for the people she infected for months, but her care only spread the disease further. In 1904 she took a job on Long Island . Within two weeks, four of the ten family members were hospitalized with typhus. She switched employers again and three other households were infected. Often the epidemic was spread through one of their signature desserts: peaches with ice cream.

typhus

George Albert Soper (1870–1948) was a hygienist hired by one of the landlords for whom Mary Mallon worked. After careful examination, he identified Mallon as a possible carrier of typhus. He confronted her with the possibility that she was spreading typhoid. She responded indignantly to his request for urine and stool samples, and Soper left. He later published his results in the Journal of the American Medical Association , in the June 15, 1907 issue. Soper brought a doctor with him on his next visit to Mallon, but was again turned away.

Mallon's denial of the possibility of carrying typhoid was based in part on a diagnosis made by a respected pharmacist. He said she wasn't carrying the bacteria with her. Also, it was not widely known that a person can spread a disease and still not get sick with it. Ultimately, however, Soper was also quite tactless in dealing with Mary Mallon.

isolation

Mary Mallon (foreground) in a hospital bed during her initial isolation

The New York City Health Department sent Doctor Sara Josephine Baker to speak to Mallon, but "at this point she was convinced that the authorities were following her for no reason while she had done nothing wrong."

A few days later, Baker and several police officers went to Mallon at her place of work and took her into custody . The New York City Health Inspector examined her and recognized her as the carrier. She was isolated in Riverside Hospital for three years and then released on condition that she would never work with food again. However, she returned to cooking in 1915 and infected 25 people while working as a cook at New York's Sloane Hospital. Two of the infected later died.

The health department then took her back into custody and sent Mary Mallon to an isolation ward for life . She became a kind of celebrity. Journalists who tried to interview her were forbidden from accepting a glass of water from her. She was later allowed to work as a technician in laboratories on North Brother Island .

death

Mary Mallon died with 69 years at a pneumonia . The autopsy found evidence of living typhus bacteria in her gallbladder . Her body was cremated and buried in Saint Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx .

reception

After her death, Mary Mallon found its way into literature, primarily through the novel Die Ballade von der Typhoid Mary (1982) by the Swiss author Jürg Federspiel . A comic by Ursula Fürst and several plays, the most famous by Linard Bardill, are based on this template . The story of Mary Mallon was also taken up in the first season of the TV drama series The Knick by Steven Soderbergh . In the series 1000 Ways to Bite the Grass , Death # 145 ("Mary-nated") was dedicated to her.

Mallon in film and music

  • Paranormal Asylum ( Paranormal Asylum: The Revenge of Typhoid Mary ), 2013.
  • Hail Mary Mallon is a hip hop group made up of Aesop Rock , Rob Sonic and DJ Big Wiz.
  • The Musicbrainz database lists more than ten songs with the title Typhoid Mary by different artists.

literature

  • Anthony Bourdain: Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical. Bloomsbury Publishing, New York 2001, ISBN 1-58234-133-8 .
  • Janet Brooks: The Sad and Tragic Life of Typhoid Mary. In: CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal 154, No. 6 (1996), p. 915 f., PMC 1487781 (free full text)
  • Donald Emmeluth: Typhoid Fever. Chelsea House, 2004, ISBN 0-7910-7464-1 , pp. 10-13.
  • Judith Walzer Leavitt: Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health. Beacon Press, Boston 1996, ISBN 0-8070-2102-4 .
  • Filio Marineli, Gregory Tsoucalas, Marianna Karamanou, George Androutsos: Mary Mallon (1869-1938) and the history of typhoid fever. In: Annals of Gastroenteroly 26, No. 2 (2013), pp. 132-134. PMC 3959940 (free full text)
  • George A. Soper: The work of a chronic typhoid germ distributor. In: Journal of the American Medical Association 48, No. 24 (1907), doi : 10.1001 / jama.1907.25220500025002d , pp. 2019-2022.

Web links

Commons : Mary Mallon  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b 'Typhoid Mary' Dies of a Stroke at 68; Carrier of Disease, Blamed for 51 Cases and 3 Deaths, but She Was Held Immune Services This Morning Epidemic Is Traced. In: The New York Times . November 12, 1938, p. 17 , archived from the original on June 5, 2011 ; accessed on September 29, 2016 (English).
  2. ↑ The Straight Dope: Who Was Typhoid Mary? In: straightdope.com. August 14, 2000, accessed September 29, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Robby Thiele: Typhus Mary - how an innocent woman killed three people. In: bluemind.tv. September 27, 2016. Retrieved September 29, 2016 .
  4. ^ G. Soper: The work of a chronic typhoid germ distributor . In: Journal of the American Medical Association . tape XLVIII , no. 24 , June 15, 1907, ISSN  0002-9955 , pp. 2019–2022 , doi : 10.1001 / jama.1907.25220500025002d .
  5. ^ Typhoid Marry Documentary - The Most Dangerous Woman in America. (Video on YouTube, 1:16 hours) In: National TV. March 27, 2017, accessed June 25, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Paranormal Asylum: The Revenge of Typhoid Mary in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  7. ^ Hail Mary Mallon Group. In: MusicBrainz . Retrieved September 23, 2019 .
  8. ^ Typhoid Mary. In: MusicBrainz. September 23, 2019, accessed on September 23, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Mallon, Mary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Typhoid Mary
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American woman, person of American medical history
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Cookstown , Ireland
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1938
Place of death North Brother Island , United States