There are some dangers you can see coming.

A dark alley.

A loaded gun.

A locked room.

And then there are the dangers that arrive warm from the kitchen.

This week on The House of Syx, Jenn and Jared dig into the story of Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, an Irish immigrant cook whose name became shorthand for contagion, denial, public health panic, and one very uncomfortable question:

What do you do when one person’s freedom becomes everyone else’s risk?

Mary Mallon was a skilled cook in early 1900s New York. She worked in wealthy homes, fed wealthy families, and appeared perfectly healthy. But household after household seemed to get sick after she arrived. Eventually, investigators began to trace the outbreaks back to one common denominator: Mary.

This episode gets into the kitchen, literally and historically. We talk domestic service, class, immigrant labor, germ theory, miasma, typhoid fever, poop, handwashing, George Soper, North Brother Island, public health ethics, and the very bold decision to use an alias and go work in a maternity hospital kitchen after being told, very clearly, not to cook.

Was Mary a villain? A victim? A public health threat? A woman failed by the system and also making terrible choices?

Yes.

Probably.

It’s messy.

Also, wash your hands.

Seriously.

In This Episode

Jenn and Jared discuss:

• Mary Mallon before she became “Typhoid Mary”
• Domestic service and immigrant women in early 1900s New York
• Why typhoid showing up in a wealthy summer home caused panic
• How typhoid spreads, yes, we have to talk about poop
• Miasma theory, germ theory, and the rise of modern public health
• George Soper’s investigation, also known here as Georgie Poo’s poop trail
• Mary’s forced quarantine on North Brother Island
• The legal and ethical question of detaining someone without a criminal conviction
• Why Mary returned to cooking under an assumed name
• The Sloane Maternity Hospital outbreak
• Whether Mary was a villain, a victim, or a deeply complicated historical headache

Chapters

00:00 - Mary, Miasma, and Misery

A creepy cold open introduces the idea that danger does not always look dangerous. Sometimes it looks like dinner.

01:21 - Behind the Kitchen Door

Jenn and Jared set the stage in turn-of-the-century New York, where wealthy families depended on immigrant domestic workers while rarely seeing them as full people.

10:52 - Mary Mallon Enters the Kitchen

Mary’s early life, her work as a domestic servant, her rise to skilled cook, and the first signs of the pattern that would make her infamous.

16:55 - Typhoid, Poop, and Panic

What typhoid fever actually is, how it spreads, why healthy-looking people can still be dangerous, and why everyone should wash their hands before Jenn loses her mind.

24:21 - Bad Air to Germ Theory

A side quest through miasma theory, germ theory, sanitation, and the moment public health starts asking better, grosser, more useful questions.

31:41 - Georgie Poo Follows the Trail

George Soper investigates the outbreaks, connects Mary to multiple sick households, asks for samples in the least charming way possible, and meets Mary’s carving fork energy.

42:24 - Quarantine, Consequences, and Mary’s Legacy

Mary is forcibly isolated, fights her confinement, gets released under conditions, returns to cooking under an alias, and spends the rest of her life on North Brother Island after a deadly hospital outbreak.

Research and Further Reading

CDC, About Typhoid Fever and Paratyphoid Fever

https://www.cdc.gov/typhoid-fever/about/index.html

CDC Yellow Book, Typhoid and Paratyphoid Fever

https://www.cdc.gov/yellow-book/hcp/travel-associated-infections-diseases/typhoid-and-paratyphoid-fever.html

CDC, Symptoms of Typhoid Fever and Paratyphoid Fever

https://www.cdc.gov/typhoid-fever/signs-symptoms/index.html

WHO, Typhoid Fact Sheet

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/typhoid

NCBI Bookshelf, Typhoid Fever

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557513/

National Library of Medicine / PMC, Mary Mallon and the History of Typhoid Fever

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3959940/

PubMed, Mary Mallon and the History of Typhoid Fever

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24714738/

National Museum of Health and Medicine, Typhoid Mary / Mary Mallon

https://medicalmuseum.health.mil/micrograph/index.cfm/posts/2020/typhoid_mary_mary_mallon_salmonella

The New Yorker, North Brother

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1938/10/29/north-brother

Vanity Fair, See the Abandoned and Inaccessible Island Where Typhoid Mary Died

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/06/north-brother-island-photos-typhoid-mary

Credits

Hosted by: Jenn and Jared

Written and researched by: Jenn

Produced by: Jenn

Podcast: The House of Syx

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Unless it’s typhoid.

There are some dangers you can see coming: a dark alley,

a loaded gun, a locked room.

And then there are the dangers that arrive warm from the kitchen.

A plate set on a table, a spoon passed from hand to hand,

a dessert served cold on a summer day. In the early 1900s,

New York City is crowded, filthy, ambitious, and afraid.

For generations, people have blamed sickness on bad air, rot, and filth,

the invisible poison of the city itself. But science is catching up,

and the city is learning something terrifying.

A person can look perfectly healthy and still carry death

Mary Mallon does not believe she is dangerous.

She does not believe the doctors, she does not believe tests,

and she absolutely does not believe the government has the right to lock her

away.

But families keep getting sick, and Mary keeps cooking.

Welcome to The House of Syx. Tonight, we present Mary, Miasma, and Misery

Welcome to the House of Syx. I'm Jen

I'm Jared.

Ooh, we got a good one out of you that time. Oh,

okay.

It wasn't too cracked out. It wasn't like, "I'm Jared."

I don't think you've ever sounded like that. I

probably have, let's face it. I

think, I think you have. I think you have. Yeah.

So we're sneaking an episode in even though we have no time.

You make time for certain things, and- Ugh ...

apparently this is one of them.

We make time for you, all 41 of you.

Yeah.

We are, uh, popping in Japan now. It was Vietnam, now it's Japan.

We are killing it on another continent. Right. Not this one.

Uh, so Japan, okay.

Okay. I mean, nothing against Japan, more of like, why, why,

why not here some, a little bit more?

Hey, you know, they just want more of your bald, bald head.

I don't know why I said that.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. All right, if I said Typhoid Mary to you, what,

what do you think?

The typhoid fever, right?

Wow. Okay. You are killing it today. I

know. Typhoid Mary?

Yeah

Nothing.

Wow. Okay, so just typhoid fever. That,

that's all that comes out of that. Uh, so my name

Mary.

Oh my gosh, you guys, he's, he's- I'm two for two, Rilling ...

cracked open the case. Yeah. You've already heard this one. What?

Did Mary give everyone typhoid?

Oh my God, it's like you're reading my script.

Yeah, so

I, I don't know a lot about typhoid, so here we go.

Here we go. We're gonna go into the kitchen, a room I spend no time in

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guess what city we're going to

Chicago

No, we're going back to New York. Oh. That's where everything happens.

I know.

No sh*t.

It's the den of disease and death-

Yeah ... I

guess.

To this day. Sorry. Oof.

That's why we can't get anybody in the US listening to him.

There's like, they hate New Yorkers.

Yeah. No, we don't.

No, absolutely not. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

New York at the turn of the 20th century: loud, it's crowded, ambitious,

always.

Today.

Uh, divided, always, yeah, yeah, yeah. , The city is growing fast,

and immigrants are arriving in huge numbers. We got factories.

We just talked about one, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

Tenements are packed out, and only a few blocks away,

wealthy families lived in another world entirely. Of course they do.

I have a lot to say about the rich,

and I'm gonna say all of them in this episode.

Okay.

Probably. Yep.

So you've got these rich people with their townhouses and their summer homes

and their private dining rooms,

clean linens.

I mean, I have clean linens and I'm not rich, but still,

they're not cleaning their own linens. You know, that's not happening.

Their children are being raised by someone else.

Meals appear on the table like magic. Now, I think a lot of things are magic,

like sewing machines and airplanes, but, um,

this is just a side note there- Okay

about magic. So anyways. Random

as sh*t. '

Cause it's not magic. This is just- But, but

meals are not magic. What's your point?

I think- Meal... I never thought meals were magic. Yeah.

Now they are for me because- Right ... Jared cooks them,

and they just magically- You just thought they were magic ...

appear on the plate.

They just thought they were made by Jared,

right.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's amazing. Yeah,

but you've got all of this labor that's going into these different domestic

activities.

Someone cooked the food. Someone washed the sheets.

Someone else scrubbed the floors.

This is actually starting to sound like my life because I don't cook.

Good, I was

gonna say.

I don't scrub the floors. I don't clean my own sh- I wash my own sheets,

but I don't put them on my own bed. All

of a sudden realizing, "Shit, am I rich?" I'm like, "

Oh my goodness. Am I rich?"

I do have cleaning ladies because I don't clean toilets

Yeah

But this is not about me. All right?

Starting

now.

Starting, uh, no,

it's still gonna be me 'cause I'm not doing any of those things continuously.

But anyways, the upper classes depended on workers.

They did not have to think about it too much. You know, somebody,

somebody else does all of those things. And many of those workers were,

of course, immigrants.

Irish immigrant women in particular were common in domestic service.

They were also stereotyped, dismissed, often treated as interchangeable.

In fact, it was common for Irish household to be called Bridget,

all of them What the fuck is that? No. Uh-uh. That's rude.

Okay.

You walked into the house and you're the cleaning lady,

and suddenly your name is Bridget.

You giving me a paycheck? I'll be Sally, Bridget.

It depends on what the paycheck is. Yeah.

And I'm guessing these paychecks were not huge.

Okay.

Huge. I don't know. Anyways

So this is, these are the kind of households that, ,

you could entrust an immigrant woman to cook your meals, wash your clothes,

take care of , your children,

and still believe that she's probably beneath you. Okay. You know,

rich people. You know how they are.

Do we know any r- we know a couple of rich people.

They're fine. I'm not talking about you guys.

Just the o- just the other rich people.

This whole system only worked because some people were allowed to be seen and

others were expected to be useful.

Domestic service was one of the clearest paths available to many immigrant

women because it often came with room and board,

which is really important because if you arrived in a city with a limited

amount of money,

very little family support, not protection from a man in your family,

a live-in job could me- could mean your only way to survive, right?

So you'd have a bed, meals, wages, maybe some money to send home.

But I wouldn't exactly dress this up as a kindness because room and board also

meant that your employer controlled almost everything in your life.

Where you slept, when you ate, what you did for a living,

whether you could leave, who could hire you next.

Like, this is, 'cause references and all of that is, is all tied to that. So,

losing a domestic service job could also mean losing your home.

So there is a lot tying up in that. I mean, horrifying. Like,

could you imagine your boss being your landlord?

Yeah. Oh,

right. Right. Sh*t. Your boss being your landlord?

No. Nope.

That would be something. And then, of course,

you have the gender side of things because in this era,

women belonged in the home, right?

You're supposed to be gentle and kind and moral and dependent on all the men

so you could be protected from the other men,

I might add. But if you're a woman and you're supposed to be in the home,

then you shouldn't be working,

but how are you supposed to survive if you don't have any money?

Right. Which is it? What do you want? I'm not, I'm looking at him Yeah,

I was gonna say

But I'm not, he's not that kind of- I feel, I feel threatened You feel,

you feel targeted right now. I hear you. You're not that kinda guy,

but also men Just sorry. You're, you know, the patriarchy.

Down with patriarchy, man

41 subscribers

Uh, no, I got one in there.

At least I know for sure I have one dude.

Okay. Hang in there, buddy.

Inside domestic service, not all jobs are equal, right?

A general maid cleaned, carried, washed, answered the bells,

whatever they did. A laundress did some pretty brutal, brutal physical labor.

A nursemaid took care of the children. But a cook, a cook had to have skill,

okay? This is a very important job in these households.

A good cook could make a household run smoothly.

I wouldn't know. I don't do that. But, you know, if I were,

I would know that timing, taste, preservation, presentation,

all the preferences of the people in the household who expect her comfort

without con- inconvenience,

'cause, you know, they're ranch. Um,

cooks could earn better wages than the general servants.

They could also have more authority inside of the kitchen.

They could be harder to replace. But, you know, they're still servants, right?

I don't know. So, all of this brings us to Mary.

, But before her name became , infamous,

before all the medicine and fear and authority,

we start behind the kitchen door, okay? Let's,

let's talk about Mary before she was the headline,

before she was Typhoid Mary. She was Mary Mallon,

and she was born in Ireland in 1869 in County Tyrone.

I don't know where that is.

It's in Ireland. That's all I got.

And she emigrated to the United States when she was a teenager around 1883,

and like many young Irish immigrant women,

she entered domestic service 'cause that's all that was really available. ,

Not unusual.

It was one of the clearest paths available to women who needed work, housing,

wages,

and a way to survive in a city that was not exactly handing out welcome

baskets.

, At first Mary worked as a domestic servant, but over time she became a cook.

Cooking was not the lowest rung of the household labor anymore.

It's skilled work. A good cook was valuable.

She could get almost twice the wages that she could as a general servant,

and she could move between wealthy households to find better pay and better,

and a better environment.

She could be recommended through agencies, employers, and by word of mouth.

And from what we know, Mary was a really good cook.

She was really good at her job. She was described as capable, strong,

and efficient. She knew how to run a kitchen,

and she knew how to feed wealthy families who expected meals to appear

beautifully and without a hitch,

on time.

, This is actually funny in a really bleak way because the thing that made

Mary employable was the same thing that made her incredibly dangerous.

So she wasn't just some random bad cook that we can just talk sh*t about in

the m- to the other ladies in the,

in the households, the wealthy, wealthy ladies.

You know?

Mm-hmm

What are you thinking?

Nothing. Waiting- Wow ...

while this crazy good cook gave everyone typhoid.

Yeah. Yeah About to get uncomfortable, just saying.

Because people started getting sick. Not all at once, you just had a few,

few here and there. Uh, not in any way immediately understood. There was not,

like, some- Outbreak or a, yeah

yeah, flashing arrow at a kitchen going, "There are sick people in here.

I don't do it." Uh, between the late 1890s and the early 1900s,

Mary moved through a series of domestic cooking jobs in and around New York.

Later, investigators would look backward and find a pattern.

Households where Mary had worked followed by outbreaks of typhoid fever,

and then she would leave that household as soon as the outbreak occurred.

Hmm.

Hmm. Uh, historical summary's different slightly,

so I'm not going to necessarily go through all of the different cases,

but the basic pattern is consistent. Mary worked, people got sick, Mary left.

Um, what? Like, this makes you think what she was thinking, but we'll, we'll,

we'll get to that. Around 1900,

a guest in one household where Mary had worked became ill with typhoid.

In 1901, another household, a laundress, was hospitalized with typhoid.

In 1902, Mary worked for a wealthy family in Maine,

and multiple members of the household staff became sick. And then in 1904,

at a summer residence in Long Island, several servants became ill.

And then came the outbreak that changes everything.

In the summer of 1906, in Oyster Bay, Long Island, which sounds super fancy,

a wealthy banker named Charles Henry Warren rented a summer house for his

family.

Mary Mallon was hired as a temporary cook, and within weeks,

typhoid fever appeared in the household.

Six of the 11 people in the home became sick.

This is strange, s- not because typhoid is rare, but it wasn't.

Typhoid fever was known and f- and a feared i- illness in the earlieth,

earlieth, in the early 20th century. Cities had seen outbreaks before.

People associated it with contaminated water, poor sanitation, sewage,

crowded housing, and poverty. That is a disease for the poor people.

Mm-hmm.

Typhoid is not a disease for the rich people, okay? Not in Oyster Bay, okay?

They, you were not supposed to see typhoid in that kind of place. What'd

the people in the, in the, uh,

in the show Ghost- The TV show ghosts that are in the, in the-

Dysentery ...

thank you. I couldn't remember

No. Oh, the basement people?

Yeah. Uh, uh, the cholera.

That's what it was. Yeah. Okay. Carry on. Just had to ask.

Correct. Yes. So but this Oyster Bay, this is a summer home.

This is a wealthy family.

We don't allow typhoid here. We

don't allow typhoid. That's how they talk. Yeah. I don't know. ,

So showing up here, this felt really wrong,

and when diseases show up where wealthy people believe they do not belong,

someone starts asking questions.

They bring in some investigators 'cause- Okay? Typhoid fever in a tenement is,

ooh, tragedy. In a summer home, bring in the police

Yeah, sure.

That's what I say every time.

We've gotta arrest this typhoid fever.

Yeah. That was funny. Yeah. So before we go further,

I wanna talk about what typhoid actually is.

Sure. Because I know it's a disease, you know it's a disease. Right.

But do you know where it comes from?

No. Uh, now that you said one thing, I-- Go ahead, though.

But I-- Go ahead.

Typhoid fever is caused by a bacterium called Salmonella typhi. It is,

uh,

different from more common types of Salmonella people associate with food

poisoning because typhoid is a systemic illness,

meaning it can move beyond the gut and spread through the bloodstream.

And, uh, this is the part we need to be very clear about. Mm-hmm.

It's in your poop.

That's what I thought. Yeah, that's what I thought.

It is, uh, this is- Yeah ... this is not romantic or- No,

that's what I- ... Gothic or elegant ... thought. I, I- It's poop ...

that's what I

thought, yeah.

Okay? And it is only, humans are the only reservoir of typhoid.

Reservoir. That's exactly right. Okay? Yep. It doesn't come from rats- Yep ...

or mosquitoes. Human poop-

Gotcha ... is what we're talking about. Yep, that's what I thought.

Okay? At least I was right. And- Right about one thing, not many.

And the only way you can transmit it is orally.

Yeah. There you go.

So-

We got people eating sh*t.

Correct. Now, it is not uncommon for feces to contaminate- Sure ...

different things, because people go to the bathroom, guys.

I don't know if you know this. And it can get on you,

but not everybody washes their hands. ,

So anytime somebody goes to the bathroom,

tiny traces can end up in food- Mm-hmm ... water, doorknobs,

and then people touch a doorknob, and then they touch the face,

and now they're eating poop.

Just like this. Just

like-- That is how it happens. Everyone

right now that didn't know this is freaking out, all 41 of you.

You are eating poop.

Right, all 41. Yeah.

I think everybody should go wash their hands immediately.

Yeah. Do you wanna go wash your hands?

No, I'm good.

Do you wash your hands every time you go to the bathroom?

Uh, probably guilty of not, no. Like,

but if I know that I was like some, you know, like if I...

'Cause we got the bidet, and if I pet it, I'm like, "All right,

I felt something wet." I'm like, "Nope, that's gross."

I'm- It is ... wash my hands. Yeah. You should wash your hands every time.

Now, if I'm cooking, I 100% go to the sink and like wash my hands in the,

in the kitchen sink. I'm not gross like that. That's gross.

But you walk out of the bathroom without washing your- Yeah,

because I- You don't wash your hands in the bathroom

I don't like that

sink.

That's a weird thing to say.

Bathroom sinks. I know. I don't, I'm-

What?

Yeah.

You don't like the sink? I'd

rather just go to the big sink in the kitchen and wipe, wash my hands.

I'm telling you, man. I'll use ours upstairs.

I think it's just this one right here It's the same sink I think it's just in

this one in here.

'Cause I just washed my hands when I was upstairs a while ago Those

bathrooms have the same sink. What is even happening here? I know. Yeah,

like I

just, uh,

'cause I washed my hands when I was upstairs just a while ago. When I,

you know, matter of fact, I did before I came down here.

PSA for bidets. If you don't have one, you need one in your life.

It's the best thing that we've ever purchased. I feel clean.

I feel the most clean all the time And

Jared:

you're sitting there going into this transition about the fucking bidet.

We're not leaving it.

I don't wash my hands after every time we're in this fucking film.

Look- You can't just transition ...

you said it.

You wash your hands most of the time Is what you're saying? Yeah. Actually,

I will tell you, of the people that come into my house,

I know when people wash their hands, and a lot of people don't.

I'm just saying. That's a

fact. It's a fact. A lot of people don't. It's a fact.

Jenn:

It bothers me more when people do it in public restrooms than it does in

private restrooms.

Yeah. But I wash my hands because I am not gross.

Yep.

So that is all the things there. All right, so going back.

Once someone swallows the bacteria

Bacteria. There you go.

Typhoid does not usually hit instantly.

The CDC gives a typical incubation window of typhoid fever of about six to 30

days.

Okay.

That's a

long time.

Okay? That is a delay. Uh, if you get sick two weeks after a meal,

you may not even connect that illness to- Right ... what you ate- Right ...

and the person who prepared the food- Yeah. Right ...

especially if that person looks perfectly healthy and normal.

But the symptoms can be brutal.

Persistent fever, weakness, stomach pain, headache, loss of appetite,

diarrhea or constipation, let's be consistent here, people, cough,

and in severe cases can lead to dangerous complications including intestinal

bleeding,

intestinal perforation, Jesus, sepsis, shock, and of course death.

Yeah.

It all ends in death.

So this is not some small little tummy bug.

This is a seria- this is serious sh*t. Sh*t. It's serious sh*t. It is. Okay?

And, , in Mary's time, in 1906,

this says treatment options are nothing like they are today.

Obviously today we have antibiotics. Now,

I will say there is a growing problem with diseases, even typhoid,

that are resistant to antibiotics, but going back to Mary's time, ,

antibiotics were not available as standard medical treatment.

So if you developed typhoid, doctors could support you, monitor,

try to keep you alive,

but they could not knock it out with just a simple prescription.

So this was some serious sh*t, literally. , That means, ,

a mystery outbreak is the worst possible thing,

where you cannot trace it back- Sure ... to a cause.

So- Here's the question. In 1906,

how does typhoid get into a wealthy summer home?

Investigators would usually look at the water source first,

'cause that made the most sense. Is the well contaminated? ,

Was there sewage leaking into the water supply? Is the plumbing bad? Milk,

many times, was often contaminated with human feces.

What? But apparently that is a thing. I don't know. , And then obviously,

where is the food coming from? But in the Warren household,

the usual answers didn't fit because the house itself did not seem to explain

it.

The water was fine. It was all being taken care of and maintained properly.

Milk-

Hadn't been

sh*t in

oddly enough, had not been sh*t in. Oh my gosh.

And so this investigation shifts because the environment doesn't explain the

outbreak.

You have to start looking at the people, right? Who came into the house?

Who prepared the foods? Who moved between the households?

Who was present when the people got sick?

This trail would eventually lead to Mary Mallon she was the cook And this is

where this story gets complicated because science was about to point in one

direction,

and Mary is gonna point in a completely different direction. ,

And between them is a question that public health still struggles with today.

What do you do when one person's freedom becomes everyone else's risk?

I don't know. Who gets to decide? So I wanna take a quick side quest here, ,

because the question at the center of this case is not just how did Mary

spread typhoid,

it's also how did anyone figure it out? , Because for most of human history,

people did not understand the way we do now how sickness spreads.

, They knew that cities could become deadly with higher populations and that

outbreaks seemed to follow filth,

crowding, sewage, bad smells, but they didn't really understand why.

And for a long time, one of the dominant explanations was the miasma theory.

Do you remember miasma from one of our previous episodes- No.

Sorry ... where we talked about the germ theory? I do not.

What was that episode?

No.

It wasn't Edgar Allan Poe, was it?

So the miasma theory, basically bad air.

People believed that disease could come from poisonous vapors rising out of

rotting garbage,

swamps, sewage, corpses, dirty streets, overcrowded neighborhoods.

And to be fair, I mean,

those things are all gross and bad and stinky and smelly.

So it makes sense that they would believe that bad air causes disease.

, But wrong, wrong mechanism. Uh, not a completely stupid observation, so,

you know, not wrong. No, wrong, but not dumb. That's what I meant to say. ,

But this is when Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch helped establish that tiny

organisms could invade the body and cause illness.

The smell is just the warning that should allude to some sh*t going down.

Literal, literal sh*t.

This is around the time that they were starting to understand what caused

diseases.

So obviously the first, their first thought is not,

"I should wash my hands because that's less gross-"

Right ... "

after touching sh*t." I mean, you try not to touch sh*t,

but I imagine sometimes you just touch sh*t. I mean,

I have animals in the house that I have to clean them up to, clean up after.

So I've, I've unfortunately gotten it on my hands,

and you know what I do immediately?

I wash my fucking hands. For the

record, they're not shitting in the house. I mean, the cat does, but-

The cat shits in that, in a box. In a box. That, by the way,

is automated fully. The cat's short here.

All I have to do is open the little drawer and take out the bag and tie it up.

We're not,

we're not living in like filth in here, so yeah.

I think people know that But yeah,

I empty the cat box and then I pick up the dog stuff so that you don't mow it

and fling sh*t.

Just flings it in the bag. So you're

welcome.

It's a bag.

But I think it flings it out into the general air too.

So you should wash the hands after you mow the yard too.

Okay.

Okay. So now that we've covered all that, and I think some of that helps, ,

you can believe that disease comes from specific germs,

the questions now change. Now you have to ask what organism causes illness?

Where does it live? How does it leave one body and enter another,

survive in food or water?

And can a healthy person still carry it?

The last question is where Mary Mallon's story becomes terrifyingly modern.

So by Mary's time, germ theory was no longer some fringe idea.

Doctors and public health officials increasingly understood that diseases like

typhoid could spread through contaminated food and water,

and that mattered because it gave the investigators a path. ,

They could tr- trace the route, which brings us to sanitation.

By the early 1900s,

sanitation was not just about whether someone looked clean.

Public health officials were becoming more focused on water systems,

sewage disposal, milk safety, food handling, and bacteriological testing.

New York City's own public health history notes that in the early 1900s,

the health department opened a public health laboratory that applied

bacteriological knowledge to disease prevention and control.

Okay. That was a mouthful. That was, that was. Okay? It was. Um,

but it's very important because this is an era when public health starts

becoming more organized,

scientific, and more intrusive. I mean, testing and, and whatnot.

So officials are moving away from, "That alley smells bad," to,

"Where is the sewage coming from, going?

Is the water filtered? Who is handling the food?" I mean,

there was a point in history when people were throwing their waste out the

windows- Oh,

yeah ... literally into the streets. Right,

right.

I mean, cities had to just smell- Yeah ... like sh*t and garbage.

Apparently some, you know, sorry New York, I pick on you, but like,

you know,

parts of it apparently still do in New York 'cause that's a big complaint.

Typhoid?

No,

trash.

Trash.

I was like- Trash ... I have not heard- You were genuinely con- ...

of a recent typhoid outbreak-

You were like, "Holy..." No ... in New

York.

Trash.

Oh, trash. Trash, yeah. Trash, you know, humans are really,

really gross and like everywhere we go- Yeah ... throughout history,

like archeological digs,

one of the best places to find information about early humans are early trash

piles.

Yeah.

It,

people.

The only thing that really bothers me about where we currently live is that it

doesn't have recycling facilities.

That really irks me. I like to recycle,

and I don't want you coming at me with your statistics about how none of the

stuff that you recycled actually goes to be recycled,

that it just goes in a landfill.

Yeah. Don't crush my dreams. Well,

our, our cardboard, for a fact,

does not go to the dump because it goes to my office,

and we get paid for recycling, so I know- Not

we.

Sorry. The company gets paid for recycling, so- Yes ...

I know for a fact that that is going to a facility that handles and recycles

it.

At least

we can recycle our cardboard.

Right. Right. Yeah. But sometimes he still throws cardboard away in the trash,

and it makes me crazy. But wakes me... No, no, wait, stop.

What makes me even more crazy is that he will not break down a box.

He'll put trash in a box next to the trash.

I know you got it. If I'm gonna transport it, that's your role.

To break down the boxes?

Break it down. Yeah. Oh, I'm a box breaker downer aficionado.

That's not a thing. All

right. Mary.

Okay. Mary looks healthy. She works in respectable homes.

She cooks for wealthy families.

She insisted with every fiber of her being that she could not possibly be

spreading disease.

How could you? I don't even have it. I don't. She doesn't even have it, okay?

But germ theory says otherwise.

It said that the body could carry what the face does not show.

It said danger could be invisible,

and that is the world that George Soper walks into. George Soper,

from now henceforth,

I shall call him Georgie Poo for these first couple of seconds. Okay.

For these next couple of minutes. All right?

Georgie Poo is not a detective in the traditional sense.

He's not kicking down doors or taking fingerprints. He is a sanitary engineer.

Very respectable, okay?

Georgie Poo. And this is, it's probably a very,

very boring job in the early 1900s,

but a good sanitary engineer could be the difference between minor household

illness,

tummy ache, and everybody's ty- uh,

has typhoid and the bathroom's a crime scene. Okay. Uh,

Soper specialized in outbreaks, sanitation, and waterborne disease.

This guy,

he is the kind of person that you hire when sickness shows up where it's not

supposed to be,

in Oyster Bay with money people, okay? The owner of the house wanted answers,

and Soper is here to check the usual suspects. He checks-

One...

Yep, go ahead.

You go ahead. I was gonna say one toilet at a time.

One toilet at a time, you better believe it. The plumbing,

he checks the water, he checks the milk, the shellfish. What's going on here?

And what could carry the typhoid?

But all of the usual explanations are not fitting in here, okay?

So he started doing something that's obvious now,

but at the time was still fairly new way of thinking.

He starts tracing the people in the household,

and one name started getting really interesting, and that's Mary Mallon.

Remember, she left. She was hired, she cooked, they got sick,

and she noped on out of there, right?

Hmm. Like a fart in the wind.

This is a weird phrase to say, but I have never said it. You have.

You have. , But it seems like outbreak follows Mary. Not everywhere,

not every single time, but there is a pattern.

There are at least five to six households that she has worked in where typhoid

has outbreaked.

Hmm, no sh*t.

Yes, sh*t. Yes, sh*t. Yeah. So,

Soper traced Mary's work history through employment agencies and former

households.

He connected her to multiple typhoid outbreaks between 1900 and 1907,

and later summaries often describing roughly 20 plus illnesses across these

households before,

uh, any authorities intervened to, to address the situation. This is,

does not seem like a coincidence. This is a paper trail. This is a poop trail.

I was gonna say this is sh*t smear.

Oh, no. No, we don't say that. Oh, no. Ugh. Yeah.

So he's following the common denominator, and it is Mary. By the early 1900s,

doctors and laboratories had ways to test for typhoid,

but testing was not fast and easy. Uh,

basically the most obvious is to take a sample from a person,

a poop sample- Right

and create cultures and let the, z- z- let it grow,

the bacteria grow in a laboratory. They're growing poop.

Okay.

Okay? Uh, I'm just... Scientists are gross, okay? They do weird things,

and it's interesting and it's really cool,

but when you're working with poop it stops being cool. It's not cool anymore.

I don't...

Poop's not cool.

Okay.

Just that was a weird tangent for me to have. Um,

but for someone suspected of being a carrier, uh,

giving these samples is not... It's intrusive.

Yeah. You're not offering it up.

I have never said, "Here, take it."

You have once.

What?

Cologuard.

Oh, I did. I did the Cologuard. "

Here, take my..."

Yeah. I did contact UPS and had them pick up a box.

Yes. That it, that's an experience if you, you look, you know what?

You get closer and closer to 50, and, you know,

you get in your 40s and you gotta take care of your health.

You should take the colon screenings,

whether it's Cologuard or whether it is a colonoscopy- Yeah ...

or an endoscopy, which I have had to do that.

Yeah, we're doing that PSA. You know what?

You should do that because colon cancer is super deadly,

and nobody wants to die. You are welcome. Yeah. So yeah. So right. Samples.

Soper wanted samples from Mary, and she was like, "No. Absolutely not,

you sick fuck. Why are you asking me for this stuff?"

Sorry. I just imagine, like, he's like, "Give me your poop."

I know. He come-- He's got a spoon. And

he's like, and she's like, "Nope."

A little, little s- you know, a little scoop- Those little- Exactly ...

it's like- And, and he's got that and a test tube going.

And he's like- "

Mary, we need to talk."

And she's like, "Get out of my fa- You are weird."

Dr. Phinney, can you bend this way, bend over and get that for me? Oh,

no. Why? Ew. What is... Oh, yeah.

It'll be quick.

Right. So anyways, in March of 1907,

Georgie Pooh tracked Mary down while she was working in a kitchen.

Can you imagine he went to her place of work? Yeah.

And he essentially told her that she was spreading typhoid fever,

and "Please give me a sample now," with his little spoon.

Uh, yi, yi, yi. Um, she-- Let's just say she was not calm about it. In fact,

she yelled him right out of the house.

Soper later wrote that the encounter was,

it was very clear that Mary did not appreciate his little surprise visit.

She denied being sick. She denied spreading typhoid. She rejected vehemently,

uh, giving samples.

And according to Soper, she came at him with a carving fork. Now, look,

I'm not saying fork violence is the way to go,

but you come at me with your little spoon at my place of work,

which in this case is also my home. So, if you come to my home, fork it is.

That's some... I mean, I,

I understand the emotional arc there is what I'm saying.

So anyways, , Soper tried again, but this time he brought a doctor,

because apparently he figured that Mary's issue was not the accusation,

but maybe she just needed another man in the room.

Okay.

I mean, he brought... Like, like the humiliation.

It's her place of work. She's just trying to make peach cobbler.

With typhoid. With a side of typhoid. With

typhoid, yes. Yes. , Shockingly, this also did not work.

Mary refused again, and at this point, from Soper's perspective,

the situation was becoming urgent because he truly believed that Mary is a

carrier,

and she's working as a cook,

and obviously people are going to continue to get sick.

Mary thought something very different. "I'm healthy. I don't have it.

There's nothing wrong with me. I am in a wealthy household. Get off my lawn."

That's what she said. Mary is not cooperating,

so Soper brings the case to the New York City Department of Health.

The authorities are now engaged,

and this is when it stops becoming a private confrontation,

and now it's becoming state power.

It gets a little icky here, okay? In March of 1907,

health officials came for Mary. One of them was Dr.

Sarah Jose- one of them was Dr. Sarah Josephine Baker, a physician with

the New York City Health Department. Shout-out for a female doctor in 1907.

Happy to hear that.

Baker was later known for her groundbreaking public health work,

especially in child hygiene and infant mortality. Cool. , But in this moment,

she is the part of the team that is sent to bring Mary in for testing.

They want those samples, okay? Uh, Mary did not exactly go down quietly.

According to later accounts, when Baker and the police arrive, Mary resisted.

She knew she was not planning to politely climb into the ambulance. Uh,

Mary ran. Um, accounts vary, but the broad story is that Mary resisted,

hid for hours,

and was eventually found maybe hiding in a closet and forced into an ambulance

to the Willard Parker Hospital.

Baker later described the ambulance ride as being like In a cage with an angry

lion.

Okay. Mary is not putting up with their sh*t. I am just saying. So yeah.

So kidnapping. They- Whatever it took ... with paperwork. Well, she

was under arrest as far as I'm concerned.

She was not.

Well, medically under arrest.

That is not a thing.

I-- But to your point, I think the ethical tension is obvious here.

From the city's perspective, this is an emergency public health situation,

right? But from- She's- ... Mary's perspective- ... spreading a disease ...

but from her perspective, she's being kidnapped.

I don't give a sh*t, Mary. Turn your sh*t over,

literally. Literally. Yep. Here, both things are true, can be true.

Yeah.

The, yeah. So once Mary was taken to the hospital,

officials got their samples. Yep. And the testing came back positive. Yep.

She's, she's got the typhoid.

Yep.

Okay? Uh, her, her... It's called shedding the,

her body was shedding the bacteria that caused typhoid fever.

Okay. Explain that.

I can't. I'm not a doctor. I don't know if you know this.

Jared:

Meaning it was coming through means of not through direct contact with it?

Mary was

carrying and shedding the organism in-- It was in her stool.

Okay. Okay. Okay, never mind.

I was looking for something more simplified in terms of like how was she...

Okay, never mind.

Not like shedding like hair.

No, no, no. I just-- And yeah, I'm with you.

Her body was shedding the bacteria into, and it got- Oh, I see ...

into her intestines. Yeah. And then- Yep ... got on her hands- Yep ...

and she didn't wash her hands. Yeah. So Mary is not sick,

but she is infectious.

Yeah.

That's not normal, and in 1907, this is a nightmare.

There's no antibiotics. There's no cure for this.

You just have to make your way through it, um, and live through it. So,

and there is also legal,

limited legal precedence because the disease could kill a woman who refused to

believe she carried it,

is still working,

and the city believes that she's going to continue working in kitchens.

Yep.

So the public health department made the decision that Mary M- Mallon would be

isolated.

She went to Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island,

which is a quarantine facility in the East River.

So North Brother Island had been used for contagious disease isolation,

and Mary would be held there in a small cottage near the hospital.

So this is an island that's completely quarantined. Yep.

It's a very small island just offside, just outside of New York on the river.

Okay. Right? Okay. But still no trial, no conviction,

no sentence with an end date.

She's quarantined indefinitely at a hospital on an island where she can't

leave.

Now, you put me in a cottage on an island, bitch,

I'd be staying there forever.

You might, you

might just go, "I'm good."

Okay. This sounds great. Never leaving. That was fun. Uh, yeah.

But Mary did not see it that way. , And this is where,

this is kind of the ugly part of the story because she doesn't cleanly fit

into hero or villain,

but she was punished for it. She really did have typhoid,

and people had gotten sick.

Some people had died because of her. Right. But also,

she is being detained against her will. That's not cool. Mm-hmm.

It feels like she's being punished for a crime. So let's just keep going.

We're, we're gonna reserve judgment for just, for just a little bit. Good.

Okay? Mary, Mary fought this. She insisted she's healthy.

She refused to accept she'd give someone a disease. For three years,

she lives in isolation at Riverside Hospital. She is tested repeatedly,

and she is watched. , She's still not persuaded.

She continues to insist that she does not have typhoid fever because she's not

sick.

Mary believed that the testing itself was inconsistent. In her own statements,

she claimed that some of her samples tested negative while others tested

positive.

So to Mary,

the negative test results were proof that she was being treated unfairly.

Something's wrong with the testing. , But to doctors,

the positive test results were enough to show that she could still be

dangerous.

, Doctors believe that Mary's carrier state might be tied to her gallbladder,

where typhoid bacteria can persist, especially in association with gallstones.

Surgery was discussed, but Mary refused to have surgery.

If she had had the gallstones removed,

it's possible that would have removed the typhoid completely from her system.

I mean, in all fairness, in 1907, abdominal surgery was-

No joke. No,

no, no So refusing to get it was not irrational. It was probably smart.

Right. But, you know. Yeah. What are you gonna do?

But this is where the story becomes public.

The phrase Typhoid Mary was being used publicly by 1909 while she was still

fighting her confinement.

So newspaper stories had been written about her, calling her Typhoid Mary,

and how dangerous she was running around cooking meals for people and with her

hands in her pants.

I don't know. Yep.

Sure.

Like, yeah. I mean, that kind of nickname does not get you a job

My nickname in school was Cookie. I didn't like it.

It was because of my previous last name,

and I did not like being called Cookie. Now, admittedly,

that's a cute little nickname for a cute little person,

and I was a cute little person also. It's better than

Typhoid Mary.

That is something. Yeah. That is a fact right there.

Yeah. Typhoid Mary, I mean, you s- she's just suddenly become a warning label,

right? She hated it. Fair, right? She didn't like being called Typhoid Mary.

Um, but good luck becoming Mary from the kitchen after that. I mean,

like Jane from the block.

Okay.

Mary from the kitchen.

Okay.

She was... It doesn't matter.

Never gonna be a chef Mary.

No. Yeah. Typhoid Mary, that's reputational murder right there. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. In 1909, Mary decides to fight.

She's not putting up with this sh*t anymore. She files a legal challenge,

specifically a writ of habeas corpus,

which is basically a demand that the government justify why it has the right

to keep holding you.

Okay? And that is the right question. It is a fair question in this situation,

because Mary's case is not just medical, it is legal.

Can the government detain a person who has been con- who has not been

convicted of a crime because that person might spread disease?

Yeah. Now, I think they, I, I agree,

but how much freedom can be taken in the name of public safety?

What is the level of proof? You have to have some level of proof, right?

Mm-hmm.

And who, I mean, is there any benefit of doubt? Mary's case is heard in 1909,

but the court sided with the health department.

The judges allowed her confinement to continue,

relying in part on the idea that government had broad authority to protect,

to protect public health.

So Mary loses. She stays on the island.

But the conversation does not stand still because people who believed Mary was

dangerous could see where it was like,

"Eeh, this is uncomfortable. We're still holding a person against their will."

Mary was not the only healthy carrier.

As public health officials identified more typhoid carriers,

the question became harder to ignore why Mary was being confined,

because other carriers were often monitored rather than locked away

permanently.

Mary becomes the most famous case, even though she's not the only one,

because she was the only one that was confined- Sure ... during this time.

Sure. Now, that's not cool. In 19010 there's a change because there is- Say

that again. You said 19010.

19010. In 19010 there's a- You just

did it again.

In 19010-

You said, you keep, you've said it twice in a row. Dude.

You did it again.

In 19010,

in 1910 there's a change because there is a new health commissioner,

Ernst Jay Lederle. He takes office in New York,

and Lederle makes a different decision. Mary Mallon is released. Not freely,

she has to agree to conditions.

She must report regularly to the health department.

She must promise to never work as a cook again.

I was gonna say, must wash your hands.

Must wash hands. So that's the deal. She gets her freedom,

no more kitchen work. Okay? On paper, reasonable.

If cooking is the way that she's likely to infect people, then keeping, uh,

her away from food prep is, it's makes the most sense.

Here's the problem. This theory runs face first into fucking rent.

She's gotta make a living. Right.

Right.

Okay?

Mary is released into a world where her best paying skill is now taken off the

table.

Put me, put me back in the

cabin.

Cabin? That was a

good one. It was a good one. Uh, put me back in the cabin on the,

on the, on the, uh, island.

I tell you, it, first of all, it was a cottage. It was not a cabin.

Agreed. I would've been like, "Yes, let's go back to the island." What?

After her release, officials reportedly helped place her in laundry work.

And let me tell you, laundry work back in the day was no fucking joke.

This is all manual washing, scrubbing, wringing, hanging.

Like it's, it's tough work. ,

But it is the difference between $20 a month for laundry work compared to the

$50 a month for cooking.

That's, that's, that's not just tighten up your g- grocery budget.

That's fricking economic freefall, man. Yeah. Less than half? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. You got your freedom, but now you're broke.

Congratulations. Yeah. So I think this is where,

from the health department's perspective,

they feel like they made a public safety compromise, right?

But from Mary's perspective,

they have taken away her livelihood and branded her a walking disease,

which she was. I mean, she, she was. She was.

None of this makes it safe for her to cook again,

but I think- We know Mary should not have returned to cooking In 1910,

she walks off the island.

She says, "Yep, no cooking What do you think she did? I think she cooked.

She did try to live under the deal, , but she, she couldn't sustain the,

the lifestyle. Like she c- any lifestyle, a poor lifestyle. She couldn't, uh,

she couldn't sustain a lifestyle at all. She couldn't do it.

So Mary began using assumed names, and in November 1914,

Mary Brown became a cook at the Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan.

So she goes to work for a hospital. That's her choice.

A hospital for children and mothers of children. Okay, Mary, um,

let's pause here. Patients, not doctors and nurses. Taking care of patients,

mothers, babies.

Sh*t, lady. Like you could have picked 100 other places that made sense.

Prison. I think everybody'd be like, "Well,

if you want anybody to get diseases," don't, don't quote me on that.

I didn't say that. But like, a maternity hospital? That was a f*cking choice.

It was. Of all the kitchens in New York City,

she ended up in one with the most vulnerable people in it.

Uh, yeah. She, no surprise, 1915, guess what hits? F*cking typhoid. Mm.

Uh-huh. 25 people were infected. Two died. Mm-hmm. At this time,

the public reaction is different. Before, Mary was confusing,

it felt uncomfortable. It was like, "Oh no, what do we do?" Now, dude,

she'd been warned, she'd been given conditions,

and she purposely changed her name, hid from authorities,

and walked into a hospital kitchen.

Right. Yep. So she, she lost her ground here because now the government is,

now we're not, "Oh, you know, the government's not perfect,"

and now it's like, "Well, sh*t, she's, she sucks." Yeah.

Hard to argue with that. But I do wanna go back to she was still an immigrant.

She was still poor. She was a woman with limited options.

She didn't- Was desperate ... have a man to relay on, to rely on. Yeah.

And to your point, she was desperate.

She's living in a system that gave her bad choices,

and then she's punished for choosing bad. Worse.

Although the maternity hospital, that, that-

Pretty poor

Don't, don't do that. Right.

When the outbreak at Sloane was investigated, Soper was called back in,

and apparently this guy is just destined to haunt Mary's life forever.

Um, he recognized the pattern again.

He-- The officials identified the hospital cook as Mary Brown,

and Soper found out that she was Mary Mallon by comparing her handwriting.

Great job. Like, he is, he is not just a sanitation engineer.

He is a detective, this guy. Uh, yeah.

Authorities connected Mary Brown to Mary Mallon.

It's over. Nobody saw her as a misunderstood woman at this time.

They see a problem. Sh- she's making decisions. And so, in March of 1915,

Mary is taken back into custody and returned to North Brother Island,

and this time there is no quick release. There's no compromise.

She's not gonna get another deal.

Once she returns to North Brother Island, um,

Mary stays there for the rest of her life. Yeah. It's, it's over.

By the time that Mary returned, the island was not just a medical facility,

it was a place where the city put people it did not know where to keep

elsewhere.

So Mary lived in a small cottage on the hospital grounds.

She was not locked in a cell. Uh, sh- I think that's important. ,

She was allowed to move around parts of the island.

She could interact with hospital staffs, staff. Eventually,

she was allowed some trips away from the island,

but she could simply not decide to leave and rebuild her life.

So it's not prison prison.

Right.

It's like cottage prison. Yeah. It's almost like not quite as fancy,

but when Martha Stewart, when Martha Stewart got sentenced- Yeah ...

and she got to live home, in home with an ankle bracelet. Right.

That is a cottage prison that I would wanna live in. Yeah. Over time,

Mary's role on the island changed.

She was not just sitting in the cottage staring at the river for 23 years. Uh,

in later years she was allowed to work around the hospital,

not in the kitchens, okay? But they do describe her helping in a laboratory,

washing bottles, preparing materials,

and doing routine lab work for a pathologist.

One physician who worked there later described her as dependable and punctual.

If that's not how my life is gonna be wrapped up, I don't know what is. Uh,

I am punctual though

I like to be on time. So yeah, uh, she was removed from the kitchen.

She's not trusted with food. She was trusted with glassware.

Right.

And I bet you she still wasn't washing her hands.

I was gonna say, I'm sure there was stuff on that too.

I don't know. Maybe at least in a laboratory, maybe people,

maybe there was, they washed, not for surgery.

You don't wash your hands for surgery, but you wash your hands for science.

That's what I say. It's the first time I've said that.

Yeah. So Mary aged on that island. The world changed around her.

World War I ended, Great Depression hit, New York transformed,

medicine advanced, and Mary's still there.

Mary suffered several strokes later in life. In December of 1932,

she had a major stroke that left her paralyzed and bedridden.

And yep, she eventually died in November of 1938 on North Brother Island.

She was 69 years old, and she was buried in St.

Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx Some accounts claim an autopsy found

Salmonella typhi in her gallbladder or gallstones- Yeah.

Right ... which would support the idea- Right ...

that if she had had abdominal surgery to remove the gallstones,

she could have removed the typhoid from her body.

Right. To be fair, again, that's- She could've

died during the surgery.

She could've died during the surgery. That's very dangerous- Yeah ...

in, in the early 1900s. So yeah, what do we do with Mary?

That's the question here. I, you know There's no theories here. Mary,

sh- she spread the typhoid. Right. We, we know she spread it.

Typhoid existed where she went. But I mean,

I think there's a difference between the first quarantine and the second

quarantine.

The first quarantine felt punitive, because they didn't say, "Hey,

will you stop cooking?"

Right.

They didn't say that.

They just took her to the island and quarantined her for three years.

Sure. Uh, now when she was released conditionally- Right ... saying,

"Never go back to cooking." And then she got caught in a hospital kitchen,

you guys. The fuck was she thinking? Of all the peoples I wanna give typhoid,

babies. Yes. Now, to be fair, she's not cooking for the babies,

but she's cooking for the mothers and- Who are feeding the babies

who are feeding the babies. Now,

I don't know if doctors really understood that babies could get stuff from

their mothers at this point.

I mean, it's just common sense,

but I don't think that all people are common sense kind of. Understood.

I don't... That didn't come out right, but you know what I mean. Yeah,

I gotcha.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what do you think? Is Mary the villain? Was she a villain?

I don't like her lack of acceptance that, you know,

this is what's happening and it-- I've been spreading this everywhere and I'm

being called out for it.

So I had-- I don't know, at the time, like you couldn't do that now,

but at the time I'm like, they're just like, "Hey,

you gotta quit spreading this stuff, and here's what we're gonna do about it."

But does intent matter? She didn't mean to spread it.

I understand that, but she also didn't cooperate.

Because she believed she didn't have it. She was like, "I'm not sick,

guys." But

she did have it.

But she didn't think she had it. I mean, this is where-- Here,

I'm gonna talk about modern society here. Oh,

I'm gonna talk about modern society here for just a second,

and I'm gonna get up on a little bit of a soapbox.

Okay. And all you fucking people who don't believe doctors,

get your shit together.

I know people that don't believe in doctors.

Don't be a Typhoid Mary. You can spread disease.

You should get vaccinated. You should get your children vaccinated,

and I don't give three flying shits if you don't wanna follow me because I

believe that vaccines save lives.

Because you know what? Vaccines save lives. History tells us that.

Smallpox is not a thing. You're fucking welcome. Goddammit. I get really...

Here, here's the deal, okay? My ex-husband, who's a great dad, by the way,

he's the father of my two kids, and when we were kids,

the polio vaccine was a live virus, and he got polio from the vaccine.

All right? And I'm gonna give this man mega props here,

because he had polio as a child.

He went through so many different surgeries and went through a lot,

and is still, you know, has physical repercussions of that today,

'cause it was a pretty fucking big deal.

And this man got his children vaccinated because he still believes in science,

and he made sure that his children stayed healthy by getting vaccinated.

And yeah,

I'm on the soapbox 'cause I believe in fucking science and I believe doctors-

Yeah ...

'cause they're experts. You know who I'm,

I'm not an expert in science and doctor shit. That's the wrong word.

Medical things.

Can't touch on certain people that I... Yeah. I'm not-- I can't

Why? Do you believe in science?

Yes. I'm talking about- Okay ... the, the, the work. So yeah,

I can't talk about work. They get you fired.

It does get you fired.

But you should just If you're not an expert in something,

you should not think that you can become an expert in something by reading

things on the internet.

That's all I'm saying. Get out of your echo chambers.

Yep.

Just believe the experts. There,

there's a reason that we don't die at young ages anymore I mean,

some people do. I'm very sorry about that. There's bad things

okay. That was a really sh*tty

topic today. It really, really was. Yeah. I mean,

I feel bad for Mary in some sense because I think she didn't have a whole lot

of choices,

but also she also made really bad decisions. She made

bad decisions.

She, she made, she made bad decisions.

Yep. So what do you think? On a scale of one to wash your damn hands,

where are you at?

Wash your damn hands. Exactly. Yeah.

You should wash your hands every time you go to the bathroom. Yeah.

Just in case you have typhoid.

Yep. That is the story of Mary Mallon, Typhoid Mary.

Tell everybody where you can follow us for more dirty topics.

You can follow at House of Six on YouTube, on TikTok.

My TikToks are crap, but they're f- not crap, not real typhoid, but, um,

they're fun. I forgot what I was talking about.

Yep. You could leave us a rating or review.

Good.

Sh- you could. Sharing is caring, unless it's typhoid. Um,

you can also find us on social media, on... I already said that.

On-- I'm bad at this

When, when are they gonna watch us again?

Yep. So we drop episodes every other Tuesday. Uh, we try to.

I only missed one in all this time.

Uh, if you know anyone who loves strange history, questionable medical ethics,

public health drama, yelling about science, uh, you can,

you can send us to 'em. That'd be great. Yep.

Let's go wash our hands.

Well, I- immediately. Yep. So s- just stay out of the kitchen, like me.

I gotta go cook. 'Cause I,

uh, I'm-- me. You, they stay out of the kitchen.

You get your ass back in the kitchen. We're having tacos. It's,

it's taco Sunday. Bye. Bye. What the fuck? What the actual fuck?

No, it was good. It was good. It was just silly. That was absolutely

dumb.

It was s- no, it was silly. It was. I'm serious. It was s- silly.