When we want to describe a loathsome individual whom we would like to isolate from all of humanity we call that person "Typhoid Mary." A "Typhoid Mary" threatens our safety and well-being usually with an invisible danger, a threat lurking beneath an innocuous surface appearance. The responsibility for controlling this danger often falls to the state.

• Who was the real "Typhoid Mary?"
• What threat did she pose to early twentieth-century New Yorkers?
• Why did her name become synonymous with contagion?
• And, what does her story tell us about the effect of the Bacteriological Revolution on public health programs?

Progressive Public Health

During the early twentieth century reformers with many different agendas tackled the problems that arose from rapid industrialization of the economy, the unregulated growth of cities, and the arrival into the United States of great numbers of immigrants who often settled in the cities and supplied labor for the new industries. For many middle-class Americans, the new immigrants represented "dirt and disease," and while some reformers recognized that poverty kept immigrants uneducated, ill-housed, and unhealthy, many blamed the immigrants for the spread of disease. Called Progressives, these reformers set out to clean up the mess, often looking to science for guidance and to government for enforcement.

• "The Decline of Mortality in Philadelphia from 1870-1930: the Role of Municipal Services" (chapter 29 of SHA, read earlier in the semester) describes one aspect of Progressive reform, the provision of clean water to city dwellers.

• Believing that science had provided the tools, the reformers charged government with the responsibility for providing the means, the infrastructure, to put those tools to work.

  "Public Health is Purchasable" was a popular slogan of Progressive reformers--a government committed to the pursuit of health could make public health a reality.

Begin by reading three short chapters from the Primer of Sanitation, a post-Bacteriological Revolution public health text for school-age students.

First published in 1910, the Primer of Sanitation is a Progressive document--it shows how early twentieth-century Americans understood infectious diseases and how they hoped to use their new-found scientific knowledge to protect the public health.

Keep in mind the following questions as you read the chapters from the Primer:

• How did the Primer explain the causes of diseases such as typhoid?
• What responsibilities did individuals have for protecting their own health?
• Who was responsible for protecting the public's health?

Progressive Public Health in Action

Now read the article "Typhoid Mary Strikes Back," by Judith Walzer Leavitt.(Note: this article is also in SHA.) Respond to the study questions, and give some thought to the questions raised for class discussion.

• As you read through this article you will find links to supplementary medical documents. Read them as you move through the Leavitt article or access them directly from this list:
  • George V. Chapin, "Dirt, Disease and the Health Officer" (1902)
  • George Soper, "The Work of a Chronic Typhoid Germ Distributor" (1907)
  • J. A. Chesley, et.al., "Three Years' Experience in the Search for Typhoid Carriers in Minnesota" (1917)

Finally, examine the two images* of Typhoid Mary from 1909. What do they tell you about the Progressive era's understanding of typhoid?

• Mary Mallon in hospital
• Typhoid Mary as portrayed in the press (She is breaking skulls into the frying pan!)
  • *All photos in this assignment are from Judith Walzer Leavitt, Typhoid Mary; Captive to the Public's Health (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996)

After reading the material in this unit you should be able to interpret the phrase "Progressive public health," and explain how public health concerns of the early twentieth century differed from the public health problems and programs described by Charles Rosenberg in The Cholera Years.