Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health [Kindle Edition]
Author: Judith Walzer Leavitt | Language: English | ISBN: B00I75EQ8C | Format: PDF, EPUB
Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health
Free download Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health [Kindle Edition] from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link She was an Irish immigrant cook. Between 1900 and 1907, she infected twenty-two New Yorkers with typhoid fever through her puddings and cakes; one of them died. Tracked down through epidemiological detective work, she was finally apprehended as she hid behind a barricade of trashcans. To protect the public's health, authorities isolated her on Manhattan's North Brother Island, where she died some thirty years later.
This book tells the remarkable story of Mary Mallon--the real Typhoid Mary. Combining social history with biography, historian Judith Leavitt re-creates early-twentieth-century New York City, a world of strict class divisions and prejudice against immigrants and women. Leavitt engages the reader with the excitement of the early days of microbiology and brings to life the conflicting perspectives of journalists, public health officials, the law, and Mary Mallon herself.
Leavitt's readable account illuminates dilemmas that continue to haunt us. To what degree are we willing to sacrifice individual liberty to protect the public's health? How far should we go in the age of AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and other diseases? For anyone who is concerned about the threats and quandaries posed by new epidemics, Typhoid Mary is a vivid reminder of the human side of disease and disease control. Direct download links available for Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health
Free download Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health [Kindle Edition] from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link She was an Irish immigrant cook. Between 1900 and 1907, she infected twenty-two New Yorkers with typhoid fever through her puddings and cakes; one of them died. Tracked down through epidemiological detective work, she was finally apprehended as she hid behind a barricade of trashcans. To protect the public's health, authorities isolated her on Manhattan's North Brother Island, where she died some thirty years later.
This book tells the remarkable story of Mary Mallon--the real Typhoid Mary. Combining social history with biography, historian Judith Leavitt re-creates early-twentieth-century New York City, a world of strict class divisions and prejudice against immigrants and women. Leavitt engages the reader with the excitement of the early days of microbiology and brings to life the conflicting perspectives of journalists, public health officials, the law, and Mary Mallon herself.
Leavitt's readable account illuminates dilemmas that continue to haunt us. To what degree are we willing to sacrifice individual liberty to protect the public's health? How far should we go in the age of AIDS, drug-resistant tuberculosis, and other diseases? For anyone who is concerned about the threats and quandaries posed by new epidemics, Typhoid Mary is a vivid reminder of the human side of disease and disease control. Direct download links available for Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health
- File Size: 6265 KB
- Print Length: 352 pages
- Publisher: Beacon Press (February 18, 2014)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00I75EQ8C
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #280,625 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Leavitt's book, Typhoid Mary, attempts to reconstruct the life and times of Mary Mallon, the first identified typhoid carrier in the United States. Mary Mallon was an Irish immigrant, and worked as a cook among the elite families of New York city. She is also the centerpiece of one of the scientific advances of the twentieth century: the understanding that some illnesses are caused by germs, rather than vague miasmas, and that apparently healthy individuals can spread these germs to others. An understanding of this scientific truth, however, raises an even more puzzling question: how can the public address these individuals who, through no bad acts on their part, are able to risk the public's health? Leavitt analyzes Mary's story with the use of seven different perspectives: that of medicine, public policy, the law, social expectations, newspaper accounts, her own, and the story's modern retelling. These seven accounts combine to provide the reader a full account of the medical and social conditions of the day, and how they combined to account for Mary's lifelong isolation. The research on this book is well-done and the writing interesting. My biggest complaint was that some of the material is repetitive, as the different perspectives do overlap at times.By K. Fromal
Less a history of Mary Mallon herself than of how the U.S. reacted to typhoid, Typhoid Mary makes for an interesting look into turn-of-the-century understandings of epidemiology and public health.By Amazon Customer
Leavitt does a nice job of telling the story of how Mary was identified as a vector for typhoid and of how she was treated by the state of New York. However, the book is laced with lots of analysis and attempts to draw connections between the way typhoid was treated/viewed in the late 1800s and early 1900s and with how AIDS has been treated/viewed in the late 1900s. These connections are valid and interesting, but the manner in which they are scattered throughout the text become a bit distracting. This said, Typhoid Mary remains enlightening and interesting reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment