She worked in many households, and while not everyone with whom she came into contact became infected, enough did for her to come to the attention of a Doctor George Soper, a sanitary engineer.

Over the years, Mary acquired a reputation as a pretty good cook, but it also happened that dozens of people for whom Mary prepared food became ill and some died. Her first job was as a laundress, but she found herself handling cooking duties when the usual cook became ill. It would appear that she brought with her more than just an eagerness to work and some skill as a cook. Mary was an Irish immigrant, arriving in the US at age 14. Keane opens with Mary being carted away by the Department of Health, itself created in response to the waves of epidemics that followed the Civil War. These days is it applied to any who spread a disease without themselves suffering from it. In the hubbub surrounding Mary’s detention, legal challenges and impact on the health of those around her, local newspapers slapped the name Typhoid Mary on her and it stuck. She was the first person identified as an asymptomatic carrier.

It is likely, a virtual certainty in fact, that she was exposed to the disease at some point, even though she reported never having had it. Mallon, or at least the part of it that gained some notoriety in early 20th century New York City.Īlthough Mary did not suffer from typhoid fever herself, at some unknown point early in her life her body began producing the Salmonella typhi bacterium responsible for the disease, and she would have that dark passenger for the rest of her life. Fever is Mary Beth Keane’s novelization of the life of Ms. It was famous in its time as a bar-less cage for one particular bird, Mary Mallon, more widely known as Typhoid Mary. One must receive special permission to visit, as there is very real concern about the possibility of visitors plunging through rotted out structures. North Brother now sports a handful of decaying buildings. These siblings are currently owned by the New York City Parks Department, and are preserved as a wildlife sanctuary. In the East River, between Queens and the Bronx, and within sight of the largest penal colony in the world, Riker’s Island, lie two tiny islands, South Brother and North Brother. A puff of exasperation is emitted…waiting) Let’s see. Try using soap this time, and I don’t want to see anything but skin under those fingernails.

You call that clean? Are you kidding me? I’ve seen cleaner hands in mud wrestling. Before you start reading let’s see those hands.

Fever by mary beth keane