Public Health – American Disasters

April 16, 2014December 16, 2020

Contemporary Renderings of Typhoid Mary

Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126

Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127

After reading the prologue and introduction of Typhoid Mary, I chose to read to Chapter 7,” Misbegotten Mary.” My rationale for choosing this chapter stems from my interest in the contemporary interpretations and cultural persistence of the Titanic in Down with the Old Canoe. This section was my favorite in Down with the Old Canoe and I was interested in how “Typhoid Mary” evolved in meaning and how it had appeared in popular culture since the early 1900’s. Like the Titanic, “Typhoid Mary” still maintains a metaphorical and epithetical role in our modern vernacular. This is what makes this section a useful read for me.

Leavitt begins this chapter by outlining two, distinct periods of “Typhoid Mary” usage: the first is before the advent of HIV/AIDS and the second is after HIV/AIDS. The depictions of Mary Mallon immediately after death revolve around whether or not she was cognizant of her actions. There is a prevailing notion at the time that Mary Mallon is an “innocent killer” or did not understand the carrier state. Portraying Mary as an unknowing killer helped further the belief in the strength of modern science. These scientists used Mary’s ignorance and their successful diagnosis and isolation of Mary to boost their belief in the power of the emerging field of modern science.

The period from the 1980’s to the present sought to infuse Mary’s story with sadness, connect with new diseases, and comprehend Mary’s actions and position (214). This increase in sensitivity painted Mary as an “unknowing mass murderer ” (218) and begged the question of whether or not Mary should be forgiven. Additionally, the emergence and spread of HIV/AIDS made “Typhoid Mary” a relevant figure again. A central theme from artistic renderings of Mary from this period is the exploration of how the past shapes the present and how the present shapes the past. Our understanding of the past and present shapes our interpretations of events, and the AIDS/Typhoid Mary subject provides an interesting forum for discussing how these two interpretations intersect.

I think the issue of public health vs. civil liberties that AJ brings up is particularly compelling. I think the question that he raises about how much of an importance we place on public health will be a stimulating discussion topic in class tomorrow. Overall, this subject provides a fascinating debate topic. I would like to add my belief that this issue (civil liberties vs. public health) fits into a much larger debate taking place in America right about how much privacy/liberty we are willing to give up in the name of security/public health. I think the discussion of Mary Mallon applies itself to this larger debate.

April 16, 2014December 16, 2020

What is a “good” quarantine?

I chose to read “Extraordinary and Even Arbitrary Powers” because I was looking to compare and contrast the dialogue of quarantine and public health policies with my own research. I have been looking into federal and state responses to the Yellow Fever Outbreak in the Mississippi River Valley of 1878 and found striking parallels as well as contrasts between the two.

At Mary Mallon’s time, state and national health boards were still in their early formation stages (more so in the South than the North). But a lot still remained unclear about jurisdiction, funding, and research roles of the boards. It was a time of anxiety in the public health world and policy makers, businessmen, and health officials alike were still sorting out their place in the field. New York’s board, however, as Leavitt writes, had been frontrunner in forming policies since it gained legitimate authority in 1866. She writes, “The local board soon became the nation’s leader in terms of defining municipal programs to promote health and prevent disease, and its accomplishments were adopted as models across the country” (40).

And yet, one of the most established boards in the country couldn’t quite figure out what to do with little Mary Mallon. After the yellow fever outbreak in Memphis, state and federal officials blamed the poor sanitation conditions for the epidemic. However, New York was doing fairly well in that regards. They needed to find another way to take action, so they put Mary Mallon in quarantine? “Why was quarantine the first response of the New York officials instead of last resort?” (47)

John wrote that “Mary Mallon’s capture and subsequent isolation can be viewed as a manifestation of the belief that it was possible for humankind to conquer disease” and I agree with that to a certain extent. However, there was also just a sense that people did not know what to do with her. And this raises a whole host of ethical questions that Leavitt discusses in this chapter, “Was it necessary to restrain even one person’s individual liberty in order to achieve health?” (69) And yet, there are records that officials believed that their capturing of Mallon was reasonable. And while I agree with Molly when she wrote, “The real disaster, was not the outbreak of typhoid, but Mary’s treatment and the public’s reaction to it”, there was no protocol for dealing with cases like silent-carriers. What is our value criteria for dealing with such sensitive subjects like quarantine? Public officials didn’t really have a good rubric back then – and even today we are still having similar discussions about the spread of HIV and tuberculosis. What is “good” quarantine?

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?