Mary Mallon “Spreading Sickness”

Vampires are known for spreading diseases.  They can spread plague into a whole community and spoil their crops.  In real life there is one case of a human that can spread disease.  Mary Mallon also known as Typhoid Mary was born on the 23^rd of September 1869 in Ireland and went to the United States at a young age of 15.  Mary is known to have a skill in cooking which allowed her to work in a house in Mamaroneck during 1900.  After a mere two weeks of working at their house the entire family got sick.

Mary then went to Manhattan and work again as a cook for a wealthy family. Not long after, members of the family started getting sick.  Some of them developed diarrhea and fever and one of her co-workers died.  She then moved to the house of a rich lawyer and just like the previous incidents, 7-8 members of the families acquired sickness.

The New York Board of Health summoned Dr. Sara Josephine Barker to investigate the incidents linking Mary to the death and illness, but Mary refused. George Sopher asked Mary to provide them with a urine and fecal sample but again Mary refused.

Eventually it was discovered that Mary Mallon herself is crawling with bacteria from typhoid fever.  She served as the carrier of the disease without her knowing it.  It is so hard to believe that she was the carrier of the disease as she would often volunteer to take care of the patients, which makes matter worse.

Mary was placed into quarantine into an isolated island until 1910 when Commissioner of Health declared that keeping the disease carriers forcibly in an isolated area is cruel.  Mary was declared a freeman under one condition that she will never work as a cook again in her entire life.

But after a while, Mary Mallon took a job as a cook again at a hospital where at least 25 people contracted the disease.   Mary was sent back into the quarantine where she spent the rest of her life.