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Typhoid: Typhoid Mary
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Typhoid is a very nasty disease. Today, it still attacks some 17 million people in poor countries each year, and kills about 600,000 of them. Back before antibiotics such as chloramphenicol, typhoid was very much feared. This is why in New York in the early 1900s, Mary Mallon was vilified and demonised as "Typhoid Mary". It was claimed that she deliberately and malevolently infected everyone she came near, with typhoid. Today, the term "Typhoid Mary" refers to someone who carries death, doom and destruction with them.
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Typhoid fever is passed from person to person through poor hygiene, such as incomplete or no hand washing after using the toilet. Persons who are carriers of the disease and who handle food can be the source of epidemic spread of typhoid. One such individual gave her name to the expression "Typhoid Mary," a name given to someone whom others avoid.
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As the quarantine of "Typhoid Mary" became big news, letters from sympathizers poured in, and she was able to gain the support of a defense lawyer. She was released on her own recognizance after a lengthy trial in February 1910, promising never to handle food again. Mallon subsequently went underground, assumed several aliases, and continued to prepare food for others. She was linked to an outbreak in New Jersey in 1914, and finally captured in 1915 after 20 cases of typhoid were traced to the kitchen where she worked in New York's Sloane Hospital for Women. Mallon remained in detention on North Brother Island for the rest of her life.
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Typhoid is transmitted in feces—usually in polluted water, though sometimes in food that has been prepared under unhygienic conditions by a convalescent or chronic carrier. Humans are the only host for typhoid bacilli, but paratyphoid can be carried and transmitted by domestic animals. Cases continue to excrete the infective organisms in feces, and sometimes in urine, for varying periods, sometimes up to several months after apparent clinical recovery. A chronic (e.g., virtually permanent) carrier state occurs in a small number of cases; "Typhoid Mary" was a notorious example.
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[Oh, so Typhoid Mary, the International Monetary Fund, is out to ruin another economy with its toxic credit candy?! That gives the main title on the inside pages a special irony -]
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The story of "Typhoid Mary" is noteworthy because Mary Mallon's Irish heritage did not fuel anti-Irish sentiment in New York. As a lone young, bright, seemingly healthy woman, she became a romantic, sympathetic figure to many. Also, by 1906, Irish Catholics were increasingly assimilated into larger society, taking on powerful role in the local government of New York City's Tammany Hall.
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