Typhoid Mary
“The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet… having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations.” [Revelation 17:4]
Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish immigrant who was the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the United States. She was born in Ireland in 1869 and immigrated alone to the U.S. in 1883 when she was only 15. She apparently contracted typhoid fever at some point but only suffered a mild case, resisting the bacteria enough to appear healthy but still being very capable of spreading the disease to others. Mary loved to cook, so she obtained employment between 1900 and 1907 in private homes around New York City as a household cook.
While cooking in a house in Mamaroneck, New York, for less than two weeks, the residents came down with typhoid. She then worked in Manhattan in 1901, and members of that family developed typhoid, and the laundress died. In 1904, she took another position on Long Island. Within two weeks, four of 10 family members were hospitalized with typhoid. She changed employment, and three more households were infected. Apparently, the disease was frequently transmitted by Mary’s favorite recipe, a dessert of iced peaches.
After careful investigation, George Soper identified Mary as a carrier. But Mary stubbornly refused to believe someone not sick could spread disease and rejected requests for testing. The New York City Health Department tried to reason with Mary but she was convinced that the law was wantonly persecuting her because she was a working-class Irish immigrant. It required several police officers to place her into custody. The New York City health inspector tested her and confirmed she was a rare case of a healthy carrier. So they isolated her for three years at a hospital.
Later she was reluctantly released on the condition that she would not work with food. However, in 1915 she returned to cooking, at a New York hospital no less, and infected 25 people, two of whom died. Public health authorities again seized and confined Mary in quarantine for the remaining 23 years of her life. When she died in 1938 of pneumonia, the autopsy revealed that she was still actively carrying typhoid. In the end she had infected at least 51 people with the disease, three of whom died.
The Bible teaches about another woman who deliberately spreads deadly false teachings. John writes that she had “in her hand a golden cup full of abominations” (Revelation 17:4). We can avoid the infection of sin when we only drink of the pure water of life.
