Disease – American Disasters

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The first chapter in Typhoid Mary highlights mankind’s tendency to find a scapegoat for society’s problems. It also points out the lower class’s vulnerability to man’s hunt for someone to blame. Leavitt notes that many stereotyped the lower classes as “dirtier than their employers” as an explanation for the higher rates of typhoid in the working class (Leavitt 18). This kind of stereotype made lower classes more vulnerable to social isolation.

Leavitt suggests that “as a society, we have become masters of stigmatizing the sick and the contagious; we label them as separate from the mainstream” (3). Society tends to dehumanize people with diseases such as AIDs, making them vulnerable to isolation. This narrative fits into Leavitt’s broader argument that disease is a disaster in a multitude of ways. She argues “it is imperative that we learn to consider the full range of contexts in which disease ravages” (3).

This argument ties neatly into her other central arguments of the text, specifically the social consequences of disease control and the inherently subjective nature of historical interpretation.

It is difficult to tell from only reading one chapter whether Leavitt is successful with her argument. However, her sensitivity to the “various ways to tell Mary Mallon’s story” and the “relevan[cy]” of each narrative seems reasonably convincing (5). Moreover, her argument in chapter one about society’s growing “scientific optimism” seems consistent with her goal to isolate each type of narrative. Jeremiah rightly points out that Leavitt’s argument and the case of Mary Mallon have a broader impact than one woman’s fate. The vulnerability of the lower classes and society’s tendency to label and ostracize diseased individual’s are two such impacts that society needs to keep in mind.

I chose to read the first chapter of Typhoid Mary, “The Rigorous Spirit of Science: The Triumph of Bacteriology,” in addition to the introduction, for a myriad of reasons. Firstly, I hate picking up a book mid-way through, and having to figure out for myself what went on in the previous chapters. More importantly for my research, this chapter dealt with the larger ideas and views of disease in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. While this predates my research on the Spanish Influenza, it provides vital information about the state of public health infrastructure leading up to the pandemic.

The Rigorous Spirit, chapter one of Leavitt’s book, traces the development of science, bacteriology, and the way that disease was handled at the turn of the 20^th century. She outlines the development of the germ theory of disease and the way that it affected the way that public health was addressed in the US, notably by a shift away from physical duties (street cleaning, sewage systems) and to a system centered on laboratory research (trying to isolate and find cures for various diseases). She goes on to outline in broad terms the life of Mary Mallon, the so-called ‘Typhoid Mary’ of popular culture today.

Leavitt’s book opens much like Gina Kolata’s Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused it, a book a reviewed earlier in the semester for this class. This similar opening of both books encourages a discourse between them, which upon closer inspection are strikingly similar: they focus on a medical disaster and society’s attempt to contain and explain it. What other links can we draw between these two disasters, less then 15 years apart, and what can we learn from these links?

AJ’s post is thought provoking. Looking at the items offered for sale at the auction, I can’t help but think about the people behind them, and the tragedy that made a piece of wood worth $100,000. We can find out so much about the Titanic passengers from these items, and this value is lost when they are put in private collections, away from public view.

Tag: Disease

Disease: a Multifaceted Disaster

The Rigorous Spirit of Science