Talk:Mary Mallon

Inconsistancy, this article says pneumonia did her in...the typhoid article says stroke...which is it? Jarwulf 03:07, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I read somewhere that she kept on working in the food industry, even after being told she was a carrier, and this was the reason why she was quarantined... The Anome

I was just getting to that, but having misspelled investigagtor, I was unable to complete the edit before someone had changed it and thus wasted my time. User:Fredbauder

From article:

Public health authorities confined Mary Mallon in quarantine for life, very harsh treatment, perhaps a violation of her civil rights.

Did "confined" mean locked up? If so, why did they lock her up? Was it because she to work in the food industry, thereby putting others at risk of contracting typhoid? And who says her civil rights were violated? I'm not challenging the POV, mind you; merely asking that it be attributed to its source. --Ed Poor 06:54 Aug 14, 2002 (PDT)

She was forced to live in a cottage on an island in the East River. In 1938 when she died there were several hundred other carriers in New York City. Her harsh treatment resulted partly from her brief return to cooking in 1915 using an alias as well as from the notoriety of her case. The complete story and an analysis of the civil rights issues are covered in the further reading. The contemporary relevance of the civil rights issue derives partly from the HIV epidemic User:Fredbauder

A site favored by User:Montrealais says:

In 1910, promising to remain a laundress and never return to cooking, Mary was released. She changed her name to Mary Brown and got a job as a cook. For the next five years, she went through a series of kitchens, spreading illness and death, keeping one step ahead of the frustrated Dr. Soper. In 1915, a serious epidemic of typhoid erupted among the staff of New York's Sloan Hospital for Women, with twenty five cases and two deaths. City health authorities investigated, learning that a portly Irish-American woman had suddenly disappeared from the kitchen help. The police tracked her to an estate on Long Island. This time she went meekly. [1]

Ed Poor's latest edition leads nicely into the civil rights question as the next page is "Can the government do this?" Might be a nice link to quarantine.

The article on Typhoid mentions her and states that she died from a stroke. One of the articles seems to be in error.

Locking her up was perfectly justified. She wasn't quarantined because she had typhoid; she was quarantined because she had typhoid and refused to change her behavior so as to stop infecting people. To her dying day, she refused to accept that she was a carrier. Her thinking was that there was no way should could carry a disease while not showing symptoms of it herself, and no matter how many times it was explained to her, she would not believe it. She was released on condition that she not work in food preparation, and when she violated that condition people died. It's a sad case, but what was the alternative? Letting this woman run around and kill people? —Chowbok 19:12, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

208.57.68.160 23:19, 16 February 2006 (UTC)Can there be any benefit from adding a link between this article and the one on Index Case (A.K.A. Patient Zero) due to the similarity between Mary and one of the accepted uses of the term? - Ben

Can we get a total count (or at least a close approximate) of the number of people she infected in the first paragraph? Mazin07

I've never edited before... Maybe someone could link this to Epidemiology since this was an early example of that science.

I added 2 ISBNs from later editions of the 1939 book in the further reading list, there is no ISBN for the 1939 edition as the standard did not exist then (I don't see a way of linking from LCCN). Linking to WorldCat Libraries via WCPA will get you all editions of the book via the Editions tab. 65.186.89.78 05:27, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

This Article Needs a Re-Write

It's a good base, but very inconsistent with information, and does not reference much of it's content. The writing style is off. For example it says she died of pneumonia, where many say stroke. And of her death, she was "incinerated"? Perhaps, but most people would say, "cremated"... Jake b 04:02, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Photo: Mary Mallon in a hospital bed during her first quarantine

I think it is worth adding in the caption for the picture called "Mary Mallon in a hospital bed during her first quarantine" the location of Mary Mallon in the photo. Is she the lady in the left foreground or second back?