Judith Walzer Leavitt's Typhoid Mary Essay

The concept of a “carrier” first emerged with typhoid fever with Mary Mallon in 1907. Mary Mallon was a working as a cook in her employer’s household, Charles Henry Warren, in New York. Working as a cook allow the bacteria, Salmonella typhi, to be transmitted to the household members through the food she was handling. George Sober, a sanitary engineer, was brought in to find the cause of illness and had proposed that it was the ingestion of freshwater clams. This was later disproven by the questioning of the infected individuals having denied they had eaten the clams. Sober then moved his suspicions onto Mary Mallon, believing she was spreading the disease as a carrier. This was a new concept at the time and was not readily accepted, especially

The book “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, written by John M. Barry, covers the progression of the Spanish influenza, especially in the United States. Barry focuses not only on the influenza itself, though, but also on the social influences that allowed the virus to flourish. The book covers how medical practices in the United States had risen up just in time to combat the virus, but, due to societal issues and the war, the doctors struggled in areas where they should have been successful.

Throughout history, vaccinations have been used to help the prevention of infectious diseases; some of which can produce serious illnesses, crippling disabilities, and ultimately be the cause of death. There is evidence of ancient culture’s attempting to treat transmittable diseases with various forms of inoculations. Developments in the research of vaccinations increased during the mid-twentieth century because of the established of more advanced laboratories, improved equipment, and new innovations. The progression of medicine during history has helped further the development of research into vaccinations. Several cultural, ethical, and religious issues have resulted from the development and use of vaccinations in our society. The topic of vaccinations has caused a strong debate amongst our culture about the safety and danger of treating infectious diseases with such methods.

Mary Fisher’s speech entitled “A Whisper of Aids,” is an appeal to the emotional and political moods of the Republican National Conference on August 19, 1992. In this speech she talks about her disease, but unlike most people, who become depressed when they learn about contracting the disease, Mary Fisher stands up and fights for everyone who has AIDS as well as bringing the statics of HIV and AIDS to light. Mary Fisher’s speech can be analyzed from three different standpoints: structure, delivery, and appeal.

Mary Mallon was a victim when she was quarantined for the first time. Science had not been developed enough yet to prove and explain what healthy carriers

In 1675, New England sees war breakout between Native American and English forces. Over one half of New England’s towns and settlements are rampaged by Indians, and both sides suffer thousands of casualties. However, through the bloodshed and wreckage, one woman lives to tell the story of her capture by Native Americans. Mary Rowlandson, the lucky survivor, spends eleven weeks in brutal captivity, after being seriously wounded and seeing her own child die in her arms. How she survives her experience is nearly impossible to pinpoint directly, but her devotion to her religion can be tied to her method of survival. Rowlandson’s commitment to her religion equips her with a coping mechanism and keeps her thoughts positive during her

In the sociology of medicine Parson (1951) regarded medicine as functional in social terms. By tackling the person’s problems in medical terms the tendency towards deviance that was represented by ill health could be safely directed, until they could return to their normal self. (Lawrence 1994: p 64-65: BMJ 2004: Parson cited in Gabe, Bury & Elston 2006, p 127).

The drive and ambition to make an impact and change the usual sequence of events in life can greatly influence the desire to follow a particular path that leaves an indelible mark on the interactions with other people. Paul Offit’s literature piece, Vaccinated: One man's quest to defeat the world's deadliest diseases, brings out the transformations that a focused microbiologist (whose goal was to see the elimination of some of the natural ailments associated with children) can accomplish.

Public health is one of the most important aspects of our population, and our nation relies on it to keep the people of the United States healthy and free of risk. The main goal of public health professionals is to protect communities (either local or national) from threatening diseases to extend our nations lifespan. Also, public health policies and procedures function to ensure prevention and safety from health issues that could arise. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, many public health issues are developed.

In the early 1900’s medicine was making some steps closer into some great improvements for health and better understanding of the human body. Doctors with sufficient knowledge of the human body and cures for diseases and viruses were scarce. People were much more concerned with government and politics, than health and medicine, until one of the greatest and most grotesque lethal pandemics that’s struck the earth in human history. This pandemic the “Spanish Flu” spread so rapidly and had an extremely high mortality rate. This was caused by the close contact of humans and poor cleanliness and sanitation, and the host (virus) and the body taking harsh action

The rise of medicalization has been affected by many social factors, and has caused a winning-and-losing situation for those caught in the middle. In Peter Conrad’s article The Shifting Engines of Medicalization, he explains how medicalization was constructed by three certain factors: first, the authority within the medical profession; second, the activities of social movements and interest groups; and third, the rise in behavioral pediatrics in terms of medical control of childhood diseases, and directed organizational professional activities (Conrad, 2005, p. 4). There have been debates that some things should no longer be treated as an illness in the medical sphere. Conrad explains how the pharmaceutical industries are more aggressive in promoting their products to physicians and to the public, which is empowered by the consumers becoming increasingly active in their demand for medical services and treatments (2005, p. 5, 9). Companies are marketing diseases (creating “epidemics” and drug scares within a society) and then selling the drugs to treat those diseases (Conrad, 2005, p. 6). Society and these companies make it seem as though these disorders and diseases can happen to anyone at any time.

The conceptualisation of medicine as an institution of societal control was first theorised by Parsons (1951), and from this stemmed the notion of the deviant termed illness in which the “sick role” was a legitimised condition. The societal reaction and perspective was deemed a pillar of the emerging social construction of disease and conception of the formalised medical model of disease. Concerns surrounding medicalisation fundamentally stem from the fusion of social and medical concerns wherein the lines between the two are gradually blurred and the the social consequences of the proliferation of disease diagnosis that results from such ambiguities of the social medical model.

In the spring of 1918, the first wave of one of the deadliest influenza pandemics began plaguing its victims (Peters, ix). Over the span of three lethal waves, the pandemic claimed approximately forty million victims, eradicating nearly twenty percent of the entire world’s population, or about one out of five individuals (Peters, ix). To make matters more dire, the ill-suited medical community was exceptionally unprepared for such a wide-scale pandemic: Doctors had very basic tools, knew little about diseases, and had no experience with vaccinations or prevention (Peters, 1-5; “The 1920s: Medicine and Health: Overview”, n.p.). People blindly faced the epidemic, relying on folk remedies such as consuming wine, drinking antiseptic, and

The complication in act 2 arises when no progress has been made on the vaccine all the while social order is fully collapsing. Scapegoats and riots break loose. For instance, Alan, a successful blogger selfishly capitalizes on the spreading hysteria by claiming the government is

What key activities and important facts tie each of the individual cases together? Some key facts that tie both cases together are that typhoid was spread by some form of contaminated food by a person (milk, food, water, seafood). In the case of Typhoid Mary, it was spread by her handling the food improperly. She was a carrier, and thus when she did not use good sanitary food preparation skills (like washing of hands), she passed the typhoid along to others. In the second case in Schenectady, New York, water did not seem to play a part in the spread of typhoid. So in both of these cases, the key fats that tie them together is the way