![]() ![]() Leavitt demonstrates how each of these interpretations reinforces or conflicts with the others, leaving the reader to puzzle out the truths of the differing narratives. Leavitt, who teaches women's studies and the history of medicine at the University of Wisconsin, expertly retells Typhoid Mary's story from several perspectives-those of the then-new science of bacteriology, public health policy, the law, the social prejudices of the period, the media, and Mary herself. Typhoid Mary, an Irish immigrant cook who unwittingly brought death and disease to those who ate her fare, was in 1907 the first person to be identified as a healthy typhoid carrier she was also the only one to be imprisoned for life as a menace to public health. ![]() A social historian's thoughtful examination of the conflict between individual liberty and public health as exemplified by the case of Mary Mallon, the typhoid fever carrier who, early in this century, was permanently isolated by New York authorities on an island in the East River. ![]()
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