Typhoid Mary

Someone who by force of circumstances serves as the source from which something undesirable spreads.</P> Typhoid Mary was a cook named Mary Mallon who had immigrated from Ireland and was living in New York City in the early 1900s.

She had been exposed to typhoid and become a carrier for the bacteria (Salmonella) responsible for typhoid fever.

After a number of people who ate dishes Mary had prepared developed typhoid, health officials identified her as the source.

They quarantined her to stop the spread of the disease (this being well before antibiotics were available).

Mary was released from quarantine after 3 years on the condition that she not work again as a cook.

In 1915 there was an outbreak of typhoid at a maternity hospital in New York.

Mary Mallon was found to be the source; she was working there as a cook.

She was returned to quarantine until she died in 1938. The name Typhoid Mary has become synonymous in medicine with a carrier who is responsible for widely spreading an infectious disease.