Typhoid Mary

"George Soper...paid Mary Mallon a surprise visit ... explained that she was infecting people...Mary became angry. She cursed at him, grabbed a carving knife, and lunged toward him..." -ListVerse, Jan. 6, 2019

"Soper, a sanitary engineer articulated a narrative...a detective story." -Patient Zero (2017)

"The hospital required the services of an expert epidemic fighter...Soper headed to the hospital right away." -Terrible Typhoid Mary (2015)

From 1900 to 1907, Mary Mallon, a.k.a. "Typhoid Mary" worked as a cook in the New York City area for seven families, leaving without notice each time a family would become infected with typhoid.

In late 1906, one family hired a typhoid researcher named Dr. George Soper (18701948) to investigate. He believed Mallon might have been the source of the outbreak. Soper went to work.

In 1917, Soper would publish a short 20-page work titled "Typhoid Mary," recounting his experiences investigating Typhoid Mary. (The work included an introduction by U.S. Army Surgeon General Merritte Weber Ireland [1867 1952]).

Mary would end up infecting 51 people, three of whom died, with typhoid fever, and became the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the disease.

In describing his attempt to question Mary about getting tested, Soper writes:

"I expected to find a person who would be as desirous as I was for an explanation of the way in which the typhoid had followed her. Certainly she could not have failed to be impressed by the strange fatality with which the disease had broken out wherever she went. It must have looked as though it was pursuing her. Could she be connected with it in any way? Possibly she had even thought that she had produced the epidemics.

"If she were implicated in the outbreaks it was, of course, innocently. I supposed that she would be glad to know the truth and to be shown how to take such precautions as would protect those about her against infection. I thought I could count upon her coöperation in clearing up some of the mystery which surrounded her past. I hoped that we might work out together the complete history of the case and make suitable plans for the protection of her associates in the future...."

Because Mary persisted in working as a cook, by which she exposed others to the disease, she was twice forcibly isolated by authorities, and died after a total of nearly three decades in isolation.

About the author:

George A. Soper (18701948) was a sanitation engineer. He was best known for discovering Mary Mallon, or Typhoid Mary, a carrier of Typhoid who had no symptoms.

Dettagli