Judith Walzer Leavitt. (2014). Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health. Beacon Press.

Judith Walzer Leavitt. 2014. Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health. Beacon Press.

Judith Walzer Leavitt, Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health. Beacon Press, 2014.

Judith Walzer Leavitt. Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health. Beacon Press, 2014.

OverDrive Product Record

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1. • value: us history
2. • value: Biography
3. • value: pandemic
4. • value: New York City History
5. • value: autobiographies
6. • value: american history
7. • value: American
8. • value: Healthcare
9. • value: Autobiography
10. • value: infection
11. • value: Public Health
12. • value: Manhattan
13. • value: biographies
14. • value: History
15. • value: new york city
16. • value: Sociology
17. • value: health care
18. • value: Epidemic
19. • value: Medical History
20. • value: history books
21. • value: historical biographies
22. • value: historical books
23. • value: gifts for history buffs
24. • value: American history books
25. • value: disease control
26. • value: Healthcare Policy
27. • value: typhoid fever
28. • value: biographies of famous people
29. • value: public health policy
30. • value: sociology books
31. • value: typhoid mary
32. • value: covid
33. • value: Covid 19
34. • value: mary mallon
35. • value: long covid

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Leavitt, Judith Walzer
   • bioText: Judith Walzer Leavitt is a professor at University of Wisconsin—Madison specializing in medical history and women’s studies. Her published works include Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health; Make Room for Daddy: The Journey from Waiting Room to Birthing Room; and Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950. Leavitt studied at Antioch College and University of Chicago.
   • name: Judith Walzer Leavitt

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2014-02-18T00:00:00-05:00

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title

Typhoid Mary

fullDescription

Discover the forgotten story of Mary Mallon—the real Typhoid Mary—in this humanizing portrait offering a window into the ethical dilemmas of public health policy that continue to haunt us in the COVID era.
She was an Irish immigrant cook. Between 1900 and 1907, she infected 22 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 30 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 20th-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 in the age of COVID-19. To what degree are we willing to sacrifice individual liberty to protect the public's health? How far should we go? 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.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Roy Porter, Nature
   • content: "[An] alert and thoughtful work. . . . Leavitt counsels us, through her sympathetic re-creation of the tragedy of Mary Mallon, that such decisions can never be cut-and-dried, and should not be seen as narrowly medical."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Judith E. Harper, The Boston Book Review
   • content: "Leavitt's intricate, painstaking, fascinating unraveling of the many factors contributing to Mallon's fate projects an indelible picture of early-20th-century New York, when modern knowledge and sensibilities collided with ancient terrors. . . . Leavitt's writing succeeds in assigning sublime clarity to an excruciatingly complex subject."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Barron H. Lerner, M.D., Ph.D., American Journal of Public Health
   • content: "[An] excellent book. . . . Leavitt's carefully crafted account of the life of Typhoid Mary provides an excellent example of the relevance of history to modern public health policy. I highly recommend it to health officials and clinicians, as well as to general readers who just like a good story-or stories."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Blake Eskin, The Boston Phoenix Literary Supplement
   • content: "Strips away the demonizing mythology surrounding Typhoid Mary, transforming the catchphrase into a person the reader can feel for."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "Resurrecting forgotten history, Leavitt raises an alarm that is much needed in this day of AIDS."
6. • premium: False
   • source: John S. Marr, M.D., M.P.H., Infections in Medicine
   • content: "Meticulous research, lucid prose and extensive research. . . . Leavitt has written the definitive book on Typhoid Mary. . . . It is a must read."
7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 1996
     Mary Mallon was a feisty 36-year-old Irish immigrant who made her living as a cook for wealthy New York City families when she was seized, in 1907, by officers of the city's Public Health Department and detained in a cottage on North Brother Island where, except for two years, she lived in isolation for the remaining 26 years of her life. Her crime was that, although healthy herself, she was a carrier of the typhus bacillus and had innocently infected 22 people. Leavitt raises questions about this famous case: whether race, gender and class bias played a part in Mallon's detention. At the time, feelings against the Irish were strong; and she was a woman and a servant. Male carriers of the bacillus were not deprived of their livelihoods, nor were they isolated from society. The press, clamoring for a news-making story, influenced the harsh treatment of Mallon, demonizing her as "Typhoid Mary." Most important, Leavitt, a professor of medical history at the University of Wisconsin, discusses the difficult issue of serving the public good while protecting individual liberty. She suggests that instead of stigmatizing or impoverishing those who unknowingly threaten the health of the community, we treat them humanely and guarantee them economic security. Resurrecting forgotten history, Leavitt raises an alarm that is much needed in this day of AIDS.

popularity

47

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Discover the forgotten story of Mary Mallon—the real Typhoid Mary—in this humanizing portrait offering a window into the ethical dilemmas of public health policy that continue to haunt us in the COVID era.
She was an Irish immigrant cook. Between 1900 and 1907, she infected 22 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 30 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 20th-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...

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