Who is Typhoid Mary and what her story teaches

Who is Typhoid Mary

Typhoid Mary, or Mary Mallon, is a cook who was bornJ.W. Leavitt. Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health in the middle of the 19th century in Ireland, and then moved to the USA. Thanks to her skills, she worked as a cook for wealthy families. After some time, typhoid fever broke out in each of them, although Mary never got sick of it.

This continued until one of her employers brought in experts to determine the source of the infection in his summer mansion. Suspicion fell on the peach ice cream Mary was making. After the investigation, it became clear that the cook was really to blame.

Typhoid researcher George Soper subsequently wroteG. soper. The Curious Career of Typhoid Mary / Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicinewhich poorly explained to Mary why it was so important to have an examination. So she refused, and she was taken by force to the hospital, where they tied her to a bed. Mary took 163 stool samples, three-quarters of which were positive. Thus, for the first time, the bacteriocarrier of typhoid fever, which had previously been considered impossible, was discovered.

Mary was sent to a three-year quarantine. There, the woman was forced to drink experimental drugs and offered to remove her gallbladder, which was considered a reservoir of infection. The operation was very dangerous at the time, so she refused.

Complete isolation did not make sense, it was necessary to teach her not to spread the infection. The only problem was that Mary did not see the point in washing her hands and did not believe in her contagiousness. So she was made to promise never to work as a cook.

At first, Mary held him. She got a job as a laundress, but the salary was much lower than that of a cook. So after some time living in poverty, she took a pseudonym and continued to cook. Since they could not correctly explain what was happening to her and convince her to observe hygiene, the infections resumed. She worked at a hotel, a Broadway restaurant, and a hospital until Soper recognized her handwriting on hospital forms during a new search for a source.

Mary was sentenced to lifelong quarantine. The isolation of the woman lasted 26 years.

A total of 53 people were injured, three died.

What the story of Typhoid Mary teaches

At that time, health care could not offer another solution: the bacteriocarrier was just discovered, it was impossible to find a reservoir in the body, and antibiotics were not so effective. That is why Mary Mallon's life was so tragic.

But there are some important lessons to be learned from this story.

It is important for a doctor to be able to explain what is happening to a person and convince him

Mary never believed that she was actually carrying typhoid pathogens. She neglected hygiene and saw no point in washing her hands. Perhaps precisely because the doctors who stubbornly treated her did not take the time to tell her how important it was for her.

How showsM.P. Pomey, D.P. Ghadiri, P. Karazivan, N. Fernandez, N. Clavel. Patients as Partners: A Qualitative Study of Patients’ Engagement in Their Health Care / PLoS One practice, in order to get the patient to comply with the recommendations, the doctor must explain their meaning. Especially when it comes to chronic conditions, when appointments must be observed for life.

At the same time, the specialist must speak in an understandable language. After all, the patient has a different background, unlike a physician, he did not learn to treat people all his life.

The patient needs to trust the doctor

It is important to do this, if only because the doctor clearly has more experience and knowledge about the disease. If you are in doubt about this, contact another specialist.

If you are confused by some recommendation, feel free to discuss it, ask questions until everything becomes clear. Remember: you need to become partners, work together towards a common goal.

Mary's trouble was that she never learned to trust the people who treated her. Until the end of her life, she considered herself a victim of medical arbitrariness.

People need to understand the health care system

Many people do not like to undergo physical examinations at work or collect tests before hospitalization. Some procedures, such as collecting smears, are unpleasant in themselves. Some require time - for example, the doctor takes only on specific days.

This should not be seen as a conspiracy of the government and corporations or the nasty nature of a particular health worker. These measures are needed to protect society, even when it is not very convenient for specific members of it. Otherwise, a sick cook will bring an intestinal infection into the dining room, and the children will exchange lice after the holidays.

It is impossible to produce prejudices about some groups of people and stigmatize the sick

The situation with Mary became more complicated due to widespreadG. Sharp. Negative Stereotypes of the Irish / The Society Pages in the United States of prejudice against the Irish. The woman began to be accused of deliberately infecting rich people, that she specially went to work as a cook.

Searching for patient zero often becomesF. Saeed, R. Mihan, S.Z. Mousavi, R. Reniers, F.S. Bateni, R. Alikhani, S.B. Mousavi. A Narrative Review of Stigma Related to Infectious Disease Outbreaks: What Can Be Learned in the Face of the Covid-19 Pandemic? / Frontiers in Psychiatry looking for the guilty or scapegoats, although this is not the goal. Doctors are looking for the source of infection to stop the spread of the disease. And the townsfolk see the causes of troubles in belonging to a group, in the characteristics of people or their behavior, label them, and sometimes begin persecution. Therefore, the infected hide from doctors, do not take tests and are not treated. In the end, everyone loses: there are only more victims.