Mary Mallon – American Disasters

April 16, 2014December 16, 2020

Disease: a Multifaceted Disaster

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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.

April 16, 2014December 16, 2020

A Blessing in Disguise?

I’d like to start by acknowledging AJ’s post about the tension between protecting public health while still preserving individual liberties. I think that many of the questions he raises are very useful to analyzing this book and I think that the Chapter I read, “Banished Like a Leper” adds something interesting to the discussion. What if the banishment Mary went through provided her with a better quality of life than when she had her freedom? Does this make it more ethical? What if even though she had a better quality of life on North Brother Island, Mary still wanted her freedom, if only to try and clear her name? Does this change anything.

Leavitt starts Chapter 6 by describing the awful conditions that domestic workers faced in Early 20th century Manhattan. Leavitt writes, “A typical day begins at 6:00 AM and did not end until the after dinner cleaning, well into the evening hours. Usually the women were on their feet the entire day.” (Leavitt 164) Mary also often lived with her employers in cramped, dirty, spaces, and when she did not she was living with her only friend, a man named Briehof. While on the island, Mary lived in an approximately 400 square foot cabin. Her time was her own and she started a small cottage business as well as being a biological research assistant. As time went on she was even allowed to leave the island to go shopping and visit friends. She also made multiple close lifelong friends on the island. By many metrics, her quality of life was significantly better in captivity than when she was free.

This brings me back to my initial questions, does it make it ethical to hold someone forcibly if you are “improving their quality of life.” For me personally I would rather live “imprisoned” on the island than as a virtual slave with no life or personal time in Manhattan. But, can this personal opinion be policy? Mary continued to insist on her innocence and their is evidence that she wanted to be freed from the island for her whole life, even though she knew it wouldn’t happen and so gave up fighting. Is “freedom” really more important than a comfortable life with personal choice? I really don’t know.

April 16, 2014December 16, 2020

Does Liberty Have A Boundary?

So, in the introduction of Judith Walzer Leavitt’s work on Mary Mallon and the public’s perception of her legacy and the impact her story continues to have on public health, she explores the meanings of Mary Mallon’s experiences early in the twentieth century and examines how American society, as a nation and as individuals, has approached taking away the liberty of someone who is sick or a carrier of sickness in the name of protecting the public’s health. (Typhoid Mary, 3) By examining the life of Mary Mallon, the situation she was put in, how officials handled it and the resulting influence her case had on the American public, Judith Leavitt ends up poses a very interesting question that I myself haven’t really considered and don’t necessarily have an answer to. She asks how we have weighted the two values of health and liberty when they come into conflict and address what might be at risk in the balancing. (4)

The issue at hand is the value Americans place on individual liberty and the public health of its citizens. We can all understand the extremely high priority Americans put on our individual freedom from our constitution and the laws that reflect it, however, how high is the value we put on public health? We certainly do not agree with most situations that deprive us of our liberty but this issue is immediately confronted in situations that involve public health and safety. Our society demands the government to always protect our liberty but does it come before our public health? Mary Mallon’s situation is a great case study and should start some serious class discussion with this question. Which one is valued more? Can they be interchangeable? Do we sacrifice the liberty of one to save the whole or does that ruin the constitutional system we created? Does the difference in how people value the human life matter? Leavitt opens the door to a whole bunch of debate without answering the question because she doesn’t even know when the line should be crossed or where. The answer is not black and white. This question deems a very blurry grey line which is perfect for our class discussion. Is the health of our citizens overshadowing the beliefs we built our country on? John Marsh in his blog post also brings up a good point to consider, he wrote, “It informs an understanding of Gilded Age culture’s conduciveness to disaster. More specifically, the isolation of Mary Mallon, if considered a disaster, demonstrates the pitfalls of the Gilded Age belief in the infallibility of science, or scientific method, to solve any problem.” This must all be put in the discussion. Does our unwavering belief in science effect how we decipher the value of human life?

April 16, 2014December 16, 2020

A Different Kind of Disaster: (Mis)Treatment of Mary Mallon?

I chose to read “Extraordinary and Even Arbitrary Powers: Public Health Policy” because I hoped it would parallel my own research on health policies in schools during the Spanish Flu. Although I did not find any direct parallels to my project, this chapter in Judith Walzer Leavitt’s Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health did give me a few new sources I would like to check out. I would like to research Charles Chapin and Milton Rosenau who wrote on public health issues. Even if their works focus on typhoid, it would be helpful to understand the public health climate of the time regarding other diseases to see if and how Spanish Flu was treated any differently, particularly in schools.

In this chapter, Leavitt primarily focuses on how public health policy makers justified permanently isolating Mary Mallon and no others. Leavitt points to the facts that Mallon was the first carrier identified, she reacted violently to authorities, she resumed cooking under a fake name after her first stint at isolation, she was foreign, and she was not a “breadwinner” as possible explanations. However, Leavitt explains there were other foreigners, other single women, other cooks, and other resisters to the Health Department who were not sent to an island to live in isolation. Leavitt argues, therefore, that it was public health policy makers’ desire to make an example of Mallon that landed the cook on North Brother Island.

As John points out, policy makers like Biggs, Soper, and Baker were determined to prove that “Public Health was purchasable.” The real disaster, was not the outbreak of typhoid, but Mary’s treatment and the public’s reaction to it. The deaths caused by typhoid were enough to make Americans in large cities anxious; the public health office’s response had the potential to fuel the national debate about the limits of the government’s authority. Although many supported the government’s decision to isolate carriers because they did not wish to be infected themselves, many others may have become disillusioned with U.S. policy makers because, according to protesters, they used the disaster to increase their powers.

April 15, 2014December 16, 2020

Mary Mallon’s Forced Isolation as a Typical Gilded Age Disaster

For my chapter I’ve chosen to read “Extraordinary and Even Arbitrary Powers,” which discusses Mary Mallon’s place in the history and role in evolution of public health policy. I was especially motivated to examine this chapter because it seemed to be somewhat of a departure from the more culturally grounded historical approach I’ve been taking in my project.

Ironically, I found the chapter to be especially interesting due to its cultural implications. It informs an understanding of Gilded Age culture’s conduciveness to disaster. More specifically, the isolation of Mary Mallon, if considered a disaster, demonstrates the pitfalls of the Gilded Age belief in the infallibility of science, or scientific method, to solve any problem. If I remember correctly, this concept been discussed in quite a few class discussions and likely some blog posts.

This way that this belief in the infallibility of science contributed to Gilded Age disasters is seen in the Galveston Hurricane and the city planners’ refusal to appreciate the environmental dangers of the city’s location, the “unsinkable” Titanic, and faith in the damn overlooking Johnstown.

As argued in “Extraordinary and Even Arbitrary Powers,” Mary Mallons capture and subsequent isolation can be viewed as a manifestation of the belief that it was possible for humankind to conquer disease. This was due to the confidence brought about by rapid scientific advancement, particularly in the field of bacteriological studies. By choosing to ignore Mallon’s constitutional rights and freedoms for exclusively scientific reasons, the New York City Board of Health and, insomuch as it tolerated this injustice, society on the whole, allowed a belief in the exclusive ability of science to better society to supersede the constitutional rights on which this very same society was founded. In the sense that dismissal of these constitutional rights was, or at the very least had potential to be, disastrous, Mary Mallon’s incarceration was representative of a Gilded Age disaster.