Typhoid Mary
Page 34
4. Madelyn Carlisle, “The Strange Story of the Innocent Killer,” Coronet, December, 1957, pp. 38–42, quotations from pp. 38, 41, 42. There are some interesting misstatements in the article. Carlisle credited Soper with finding fourteen families who suffered from typhoid in Mary Mallon’s wake (a dozen plus two), when the total was seven (see chap. 1). She wrote that there was “no epitaph on her grave,” and there was one, “Jesus Mercy.” Both statements add to the pile of guilt the author attributes to Mallon.
5. M. F. King, “Typhoid Mary’s Secret,” American Mercury 91 (August, 1960): 124–28.
6. John Lentz, “The Malady of Mary Mallon,” Today’s Health, April, 1966, pp. 34–36.
7. Gordon W. Jones, “The Scourge of Typhoid,” American History Illustrated 1 (1967): 22–28.
8. The probable source was Milton J. Rosenau, Preventive Medicine and Hygiene, 6th ed. (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1935). On p. 142, Rosenau wrote, “A subsequent study of her career showed that . . . she may have given rise to the well-known water-borne outbreak of typhoid in Ithaca, New York in 1903, involving over 1300 cases.” Soper, who conducted the most thorough study of the Ithaca outbreak, did not consider Mallon its cause. See George Soper, “The Epidemic of Typhoid Fever at Ithaca, N.Y.,” Journal of the New England Water Works Association 18 (1905): 431–61. See also Heather Munro Prescott, “ ‘How Long Must We Send Our Sons Into Such Danger?’ Cornell University and the Ithaca Typhoid Epidemic of 1903,” Paper presented at the Conference on New York State History, June 11, 1988. For a similar connection of Mary Mallon with the Ithaca epidemic, see the Guiness Book of World Records (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 1971–1987).
9. Jones, “The Scourge,” pp. 25, 26.
10. Mark Sufrin, “The Case of the Disappearing Cook,” American Heritage 21 (1970): 37–43.
11. The caption is on p. 39, the picture on p. 38.
12. Mark Sufrin, “They Called Her ‘Typhoid Mary,’ ” Illustration by Gary Viskupic, Newsday September 9, 1979, pp. 27, 36, 40.
13. Mary C. McLaughlin, M.D., “Mary Mallon: Alias Typhoid Mary,” The Recorder 40 (1979): 44–57.
14. Ibid., p. 55.
15. I want to thank all the people who answered my query about these points in the Irish Echo, November 20, 1993, most especially F. T. O’Brien, James N. O’Connor, John Concannon, Nora Finger, John O’Connor, and Kevin Cahill. An Irish political connection for Mallon was very intriguing, but outside of McLaughlin’s one informant, Joel Bennett (now deceased), there is no evidence to support it. In this regard, I am also grateful for the reminder from Jack Taub, in response to my Author’s Query, New York Times, Book Review sec, January 16, 1994, who said that when the cook in an orphan home in Philadelphia in 1932 was found to be a carrier she was referred to as “a typhoid Mary.” Thirty children came down with typhoid fever as a result of her cooking, and she was fired. Jack Taub to author, January 20, 1994, and March 4, 1994.
Another reference to a countess in Mallon’s story is revealed by Julia Efros in the BBC production, “Typhoid Mary,” written and produced by Jonathan Gili, shown on the History Channel, September 24, 1995. Efros is the daughter of Alexandra Plavska, the physician who first employed Mary Mallon in the laboratory at North Brother Island. She told the BBC that her mother was a countess, although she always preferred to be addressed as “Dr.,” the title she earned.
16. Shirley Gee, Typhoid Mary, The Monday Play, Best Radio Plays of 1979 (London: Eyre Methuen/BBC Publications, 1980), pp. 7–49.
17. The Irish song, “Cockles and Mussels” or “Molly Malone,” has the familiar refrain: “She wheeled her wheelbarrow, / Through the streets broad and narrow, / Crying cockles and mussels, / Alive alive oh.” These are the last words of Gee’s play. See James F. Leisy, The Folk Song Abecedary (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1966), pp. 61–62.
18. Vermont Royster, “Tests vs. Rights: The Story of Mary Mallon,” Wall Street Journal, September 18, 1986, p. 32. I am grateful to Ann Carmichael for this reference and for her discussion of the contemporary issues raised by Mary Mallon’s experiences.
19. J. F. Federspiel, The Ballad of Typhoid Mary, trans. Joel Agee (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1983), originally published in 1982 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, under the title Die Ballade von der Typhoid Mary
20. Possibly because of the verisimilitude of the novel, reviewers believe as fact considerably more than is warranted. See, for example, John Calvin Batchelor, “Death Dogged Her Footsteps,” New York Times, Book Review sec, February 12, 1984, p. 11. See also Samuel G. Freedman, ibid., March 18, 1984, p. 24.
21. “The Tale of Typhoid Mary,” Current Health, January, 1984, pp. 20–21.
22. Another article in the same period, this one putting Mallon into the context of food-borne disease outbreaks, is Catherine Carey, “Mary Mallon’s Trail of Typhoid,” FDA Consumer, June, 1989, pp. 18–21. See also Joseph McNamara, “A Justice Story: The Long Search for Typhoid Mary,” New York Daily News, November 3, 1985, p. 53; and Dick Donovan, “Typhoid Mary Served Death on a Platter!” Weekly World News, January 7, 1990, p. 41. I am grateful to Jeff Stryker for sending me a xerox of this article in response to my Author’s Query, the New York Times, Book Review sec, January 16, 1994.
23. Tanya Contos, Typhoid Mary, Produced at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, June, 1985. I am grateful to Tanya Contos for allowing me to read her play, which has not been published, and for her permission to quote from it. The play was reviewed by John Engstrom in the Boston Globe, June 20, 1985, p. 35.
24. Joan Schenkar, Fulfilling Koch’s Postulate, 1986. I am grateful to Joan Schenkar for sending me a copy of the play, which remains unpublished, although it was excerpted in Drama Review, and for her permission to write about it. See Elin Diamond, “Crossing the Corpus Callosum: An Interview with Joan Schenkar,” The Drama Review 35 (Summer, 1991): 99–128. The play ran in New York and London.
25. Diamond, “Corpus Callosum.”
26. Vivian M. Patraka, “Mass Culture and Metaphors of Menace in Joan Schenkar’s Plays,” in Making a Spectacle, ed. Linda Hart (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), pp. 25–40, quotation from p. 36.
27. For other reviews, see D. J. R. Bruckner, “Science of Cooking,” New York Times, February 12, 1986, p. C21; Michael Feingold, “Play-Doh’s Cave,” Village Voice, February 18, 1986, pp. 99–100.
28. Barry J. Drogin, Typhoid Mary, 1988. Music and dance piece. Original production with the Bicycle Shop Dancers, choreographer Peg Hill, September 30—October 9, 1988, Nikolai/Louis ChoreoSpace, New York City. A tape of the production is available from Not Nice Music, which holds the copyright. I am grateful to Barry Drogin for corresponding with me about this production, for allowing me to hear the tape, and for providing me with a copy of the original production notes.
29. Barry J. Drogin to author, February 5, 1994, in response to Author’s Query, New York Times, Book Review sec, January 16, 1994.
30. Julinda Lewis, Dance Magazine 63 (February, 1989): 98.
31. Ibid.
32. Gus Solomons, Jr., “Branded,” Village Voice, October 25, 1988, p. 94; Lewis, Dance.
33. Mark St. Germain, Forgiving Typhoid Mary, 1989. Produced at the Long Wharf Theater, New Haven, January 3–22, 1989; George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick, March, 1991; Contemporary American Theater Festival, Shepherd College, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, July 6–24, 1994, and Refreshment Committee Theatre Company, Minneapolis Theater Garage, March 2–4, 8–11, 15–18, 1995. I am grateful to Carolyn G. Shapiro for first calling this play to my attention and for arranging with Mark St. Germain for me to read it in final draft form, and to Mr. St. Germain for his permission. I also would like to thank University of Wisconsin Drama Professor Robert Skloot for helping me locate various theater materials and Elaine Tyler May for alerting me to the Minneapolis production of St. Germain’s play.
34. As cited in Refreshment Committee Theatre Company, 801 Dayton Avenue, St. Paul, Minn., ticket advertisement
for the March, 1995, production in Minneapolis.
35. Ibid.
36. Carolyn Gage, Cookin’ With Typhoid Mary in The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Other Plays, Copyright 1994 by Carolyn Gage, Printed by Mc-Naughton and Gunn, pp. 127–39, quotations from pp. 129, 130, 133, 136, 138.
37. John Steele Gordon, “The Passion of Typhoid Mary,” American Heritage 45 (1994): 118–21, quotation from p. 120.
38. John Steele Gordon, National Public Radio, May 24, 1994, interviewed by Alex Chadwick. My thanks to Vanessa Northington Gamble for taping the interview for me, and to Gerard Fergerson and Lauren Bryant for quickly calling my attention to it. Gordon assumes that most cooks did not change jobs very often, but the evidence (see chap. 6) does not support that conclusion. See also John F. Wukovits, “Destroying Angel,” American History Illustrated 25 (1990): 68–72, who sees Mallon as “a victim at least in part of circumstances beyond her control.”
39. Jane E. Brody, “Personal Health,” New York Times, August 24, 1994, p. B8.
40. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992), p. 1934; Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1986).
41. Willard J. Lassers to author, February 19, 1994, in response to Author’s Query, New York Times, Book Review sec, January 16, 1994. The legal cure for such Typhoid Marys is to build a “Chinese wall” between the new lawyer and the attorneys working on the case. Lassers’s search of the literature turned up thirteen cases between 1977 and 1994. I am very grateful to Judge Lassers, Circuit Court of Cook County, Chicago, for this information.
42. Anthony Lewis, “Good Old Reliable Nixon,” New York Times, March 15, 1976, p. 31.
43. “Grand New Party?” Wall Street Journal, August 16, 1988.
44. Bill Powell, “America’s Bad Example,” Newsweek, April 11, 1994, p. 39.
45. “Saturday Night Live,” NBC, April 17, 1993.
46. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “Memo to the 1993 Crowd: Believe in Yourselves,” Newsweek, January 11, 1993, p. 39.
47. Patricia D. Cornwell, Body of Evidence: A Kay Scarpetta Mystery (New York: Avon Books, 1991), p. 335. See also a reference to “Typhoid Jenny” in Nancy Pickard, Bum Steer (New York: Pocket Books, 1990), p. 27.
48. Marge Piercy, The Longings of Women (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1994), p. 349.
49. Bernie Lincicome, “Spare us the Scoop on Rodman,” Wisconsin State Journal, May 26, 1995, p. 1D.
50. Symantec Advertisement, Byte, January, 1994.
51. I want to thank Stacie Colwell, an M.D./Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois, for the suggestion about jump rope rhymes and Len Berlind for responding to an internet request for the words. I was unable to locate or date the rhyme in a text, for example, in Roger D. Abrahams, ed., Jump-rope Rhymes, a Dictionary (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969).
At least one version of the rhyme includes this second line: “Typhoid Mary, what do you carry?/Homo Harry, who will you marry?” The juxtaposition more than suggests the theme of social deviance.
Another example of the story’s spread through American culture is its appearance as a comic, “Sickness Unto Death: Typhoid Mary,” in Bronwyn Carlton, The Big Book of Death (New York: Paradox Press, 1995), pp. 74–75. I am grateful to David Bordwell for calling this example to my attention.
52. Russell Baker, “The Diversity Cuisine,” New York Times, July 8, 1995, p. 15.
53. See, for example, a “Q&A” in the Wisconsin State Journal, June 13, 1993, in which she was referred to as “an immunological marvel,” as if she were the only healthy carrier known.
54. Lawrence K. Altman, in a New York Times article about a carrier, wrote: “Though many people think of ‘Typhoid Mary’ as a nickname for a mythical spreader of typhoid fever, she made her presence known in New York early in this century as the most famous typhoid carrier.” “Typhoid Carrier Tied to Epidemic,” New York Times, October 26, 1970, p. 16.
55. Marc L. Sherman, “A Diptych,” The Belletrist Review 1 (Fall, 1992): 15–23. I am grateful to Marc Sherman for sending me a copy of this story, March 2, 1994, in response to my Author’s Query, New York Times, Book Review sec, January 16, 1994.
CONCLUSION
1. See, for example, Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984); Morton W. Bloomfield, ed., The Interpretation of Narrative: Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970); W. J. T. Mitchell, ed., On Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); and Barbara Herrnstein Smith, “Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories,” Critical Inquiry 7 (1980): 213–36. For application of this work to history, see Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” Critical Inquiry 7 (1980): 5–27; Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); Robert H. Canary and Henry Kozicki, eds., The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understanding (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978); and Dominick LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
I am particularly grateful to Susan Stanford Friedman for consulting with me on this project and helping me see how narrative structure influences understanding. See her “Making History: Reflections on Feminism, Narrative, and Desire,” in Feminism Beside Itself, ed. Diane Elan and Robyn Wiegman (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 11–53.
2. The quotation of James C. Scott is from p. 169 of his “History According to Winners and Losers,” Senri Ethnological Studies 13 (1984): 161–210; see also his Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). I have quoted Paul Farmer’s AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 21.
The idea that situation affects perceptions and functions is not new. It is what literary critics call “positionality” and philosophers call “standpoint theory.” See, for example, Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), especially pp. 119–33; and Linda Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,” Signs 13 (1988): 405–436. Historians, too, have been sensitive to relative points of view, and some interesting recent work has focused on seeking out multiple perspectives on historical events. See, among medical historians, for example, Steven M. Stowe, “Obstetrics and the Work of Doctoring in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century American South,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 64 (1990): 540–66; and among labor historians, Alice Kessler-Harris, “Treating the Male as ‘Other’: Redefining the Parameters of Labor History,” Labor History 34 (1993): 190–204. One of my own examples of how positionality affects our interpretation of the past is “ A Worrying Profession’: The Domestic Environment of Medical Practice in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” the Fielding H. Garrison Lecture, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 69 (Spring, 1995): 1–29.
3. George Soper, “The Curious Career of Typhoid Mary,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 15 (October, 1939): 704.
4. George Soper, “Typhoid Mary,” Military Surgeon 45 (July, 1919): 7.
5. Timothy F. Murphy, Ethics in an Epidemic: AIDS, Morality, and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 14. See Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987). Another review of Shilts’s book made explicit the connection between Mary Mallon and Gaetan Dugas: “An airline steward from Montreal may have been the 20th century’s equivalent of Typhoid Mary, responsible for introducing AIDS in North America.” “Man Linked to AIDS Invasion,” Atlanta Constitution, October 8, 1987, p. 39.
6. Another factor to weigh when considering testing programs is cost. As we saw in chap. 2, New York’s expensive program of testing food handlers was discontinued in the 1930s. Given limited resources, all the programs that
might be tried need to be weighed with regard to cost effectiveness.
7. “Preface,” The Impact of Homophobia and Other Social Biases on AIDS (San Francisco: Public Media Center, 1995), p. 3. See also, for example, study of the use of the term “AIDS Mary” as it applies to women infected with HIV who purposefully seduce partners, in Gary Allen Fine, “Welcome to the World of AIDS: Fantasies of Women’s Revenge,” Western Folklore 46 (1987): 192–97. I am grateful to Vanessa Northington Gamble for giving me these references.
8. New York World, July 20, 1909, p. 18.
9. Ramon Perez is quoted in Rosanne Pagano, “Quarantine Considered for AIDS Victims,” California Lawyer 4 (March, 1984): 17. See also, for example, Nancy Rabinowitz, “Hospitals Revive Quarantine of TB Patients,” (Madison, Wisconsin) Capital Times, November 29, 1992, p. C1. For a discussion of various states’ practices see Harlon L. Dalton, Scott Burris, and the Yale AIDS Law Project, eds., AIDS and the Law: A Guide for the Public (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).
10. Stephen C. Joseph, “Quarantine: Sometimes a Duty,” New York Times, February 10, 1990, p. 15.
11. Sandor Katz, “HIV Testing—A Phony Cure,” The Nation, May 28, 1990: 738–42. On this sort of dilemma applied to other issues, see, for example, Tamar Lewin, “Debate in Philadelphia on Forced Vaccinations,” New York Times, February 24, 1991, p. 17; and James J. Kilpatrick, “Fluoridation is Abomination,” Wisconsin State Journal, March 5, 1990.
12. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “AIDS, Public Health, and Human Rights in Cuba,” Lancet 342 (1993): 966. See also Karen Wald, “AIDS in Cuba: a Dream or a Nightmare?” Z Magazine, December, 1990, pp. 104–9. I am grateful to Allen Hunter for calling the latter to my attention.