Who is the carrier of Salmonella?
One of the causes of food poisoning in humans is salmonella bacteria, which enters the human body through eating contaminated food and water or touching infected animals and causes symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, fever, diarrhea, and abdominal pain; and in severe cases, leading to death.
The World Health Organization has announced that typhoid (Salmonella typhi) causes 11 to 20 million people to fall ill and 128,000 to 161,000 deaths in the world. It is interesting to know that some people carry salmonella with them without showing any symptoms and can spread these bacteria from their body to the outside environment for years. Therefore, healthy carriers are more dangerous than sick people. One such person was Mary Mallon, who was recognized as the first healthy carrier of salmonella.
Born in Ireland in 1869, she immigrated to America at the age of 15 and began working as a cook in the homes of wealthy families. In 1906, after one of the daughters of a wealthy family fell ill during summer vacation, followed by six of other 11 family members, the landlord hired someone to find out the reason. The said person announced his opinion after the review. He believed that the recently hired cook was the main culprit.
He found out that Mary Mallon was employed in seven jobs from 1900 to 1907. Shortly after she started work, 22 people fell ill and one girl died of typhoid fever. After suspecting her, Mary Mallon ran away from that house, but she was arrested by the aid from police and transferred to a hospital in New York, and after sampling and examination, the typhoid bacillus was found in her feces. After this incident, Marie was quarantined on an island by order of the health authorities, and for two years, almost most of her stool samples were reported positive and containing bacteria.
Mary sued the health department to the judicial authorities because she believed she had no symptoms of the disease and demanded her release. Finally, in 1910, a new health officer released Marie on the condition that she no longer work as a cook. In January 1915, a hospital in Manhattan suffered an outbreak of typhoid fever, which sickened 25 people with two of them died.
After investigating, they found that a cook named Mrs. Brown had just been hired. Mrs. Brown was actually Mary Mallon, who worked under the pseudonym "Brown." After this event, Mary was quarantined on an island for 23 years and died there.