![]() ![]() ![]() The result? Her customers were getting sick.Ĭould Mary Mallon be the first American healthy carrier of typhoid? The woman was perfectly healthy now, but feces, urine, and blood tests showed she was still full of active typhoid germs, and her hand washing was not careful enough. The carrier was a woman found working in a bakery in Germany, who had been ill with typhoid years before and then made a full recovery. Robert Koch, had recently published a scientific paper detailing his discovery of the first confirmed healthy carrier of typhoid. In 1906, the idea of healthy carriers of disease was brand new, and very frightening. Unless – and this is what had George Soper so intrigued – Mary Mallon was able to pass on the typhoid infection to others without showing any symptoms of the disease herself. Yet how could this be? How could Mary have been ill and contagious with typhoid for 10 years? It didn’t make any sense. Mary, he discovered, was linked to 22 cases of typhoid and one death – all in wealthy homes with no previous history of typhoid. ![]() Patient Zero: Solving the Mysteries of Deadly Epidemics.ġ66 pp., trade pbk. CM Magazine: Patient Zero: Solving the Mysteries of Deadly Epidemics. ![]()
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