242 CIVIC BIOLOGY 



4. Observed l flies swarming on crates of raspberries and black- 

 berries, absolutely open and unprotected (caught about sixty flies with 

 one sweep of the hand over such a crate). 



Carriers and contact with food. Typhoid Mary was dis- 

 covered by Soper in 1906. She was apparently healthy, but 

 wherever she served as cook typhoid fever was sure to fol- 

 low, and she was found to be alive with virulent typhoid 

 bacteria. She had already caused several small and at least 

 one large epidemic. From 1907 to 1910 Mary was detained 

 in the isolation hospital of the New York Board of Health 

 and then was released upon her promise to change her occu- 

 pation. Early in 1915 an epidemic of 25 cases broke out 

 in one of the New York hospitals, and there in the kitchen, 

 under an assumed name, was found Typhoid Mary. 



About 4 per cent of those who recover from the disease* 

 remain as typhoid carriers, either continuously or intermit- 

 tently, and some may not even know that they have ever 

 had typhoid at all. For some unaccountable reason there 

 are about five women carriers to one man. A typhoid epi- 

 demic occurred at Hanford, California, March, 1914, the 

 study of which by the health officers proved most instruc- 

 tive. A church dinner, of which 150 partook, resulted in 

 93 cases and 3 deaths. The infection was traced to a woman 

 who had cut the bread and prepared a dishpan of Spanish 

 spaghetti. She had nursed her daughter through typhoid 

 thirty-five years before, but did not know that she herself 

 had ever had the disease. In order to test the matter a 

 dish of spaghetti, not so large, was similarly prepared, and, 

 although baked much more thoroughly than that served at 

 the dinner (until the top was brown, the points on the sur- 

 face were charred, and the edges were boiling furiously) 

 living typhoid bacilli were found within half an inch of the 



1 In a public market, Washington, D.C., July 3, 1915. 



