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SYSK Selects: The Wind Cries Typhoid Mary · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Selects. It's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a Saturday, but I'm here anyway because I love you.
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  Speaker 1: This week, I am choosing The Wind Cries Typhoid Mary
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  Speaker 1: from oct two thousand eleven, and Uh, to be honest,
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  Speaker 1: I think this one well for a couple of reasons.
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  Speaker 1: A is because I love it. I love our history
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  Speaker 1: podcasts and this one was super super interesting. And uh,
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  Speaker 1: the other reason is, UH, to be honest, I really
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  Speaker 1: just love this title, The Wind Cries Typhoid Mary. I
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  Speaker 1: titled this one myself, and I just wanted to see
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  Speaker 1: it in our feet again because I like looking at it.
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  Speaker 1: So here we go, The Wind Cries Typhoid Mary. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: am welcome to the podcast son Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Greeny Boy, Chuck and Bryant and Jerry back in the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: his house. None more guests producing. No, that was a
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  Speaker 1: rough week, she was, but she's back. Hey Jerry, did
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  Speaker 1: you hear that? Everybody? Probably not Chuck Jerry. Have you
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  Speaker 1: guys ever heard how much manure a horse produces in
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  Speaker 1: a day. I'm glad you went with this. I was
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  Speaker 1: never really occurred to me. Go ahead, pounds twenty five
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  Speaker 1: pounds of manure? Did you do the math? Because I did?
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  Speaker 1: All right, Well, you come with that in a second, okay, So, um,
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  Speaker 1: just go back with me a little bit, chuck to
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  Speaker 1: the time when Daniel day Lewis was walking around New
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  Speaker 1: York with a meat cleaver, overacting a little bit in
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  Speaker 1: my opinion. Um, And it's the the late nineteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: and the horse is the is the preferred of transportation
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  Speaker 1: for everything from the most humble delivery cart to the
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  Speaker 1: greatest ambulance to you know, people who like to ride horses,
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  Speaker 1: three musketeers, that kind of thing. Everybody had a horse
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  Speaker 1: to the limit, to the airport wherever. So there were
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  Speaker 1: about two hundred thousand horses in New York City in
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  Speaker 1: use in right, Yeah, multiply that times twenty five pounds
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  Speaker 1: of poop a day and what do you get? Chucked? Well?
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  Speaker 1: I did two because I thought that was the number. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: So that's fine, we'll go with that. More than six
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  Speaker 1: point two million pounds of horse poop per day deposited
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  Speaker 1: on the streets of New York. Okay, Now, um, let's
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  Speaker 1: say that's okay, Okay, Um, there's that many horses. There's
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  Speaker 1: six point two million pounds of horsepoop every day. It's
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  Speaker 1: a lot of poop. But not only that, there was
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  Speaker 1: no one cleaning it up. It was not enough people
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  Speaker 1: cleaning it up. Let's say that for sure. It was
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  Speaker 1: just left there basically in a lot of cases, um,
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  Speaker 1: to basically be ground into the cobble stone. And you know,
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  Speaker 1: it makes you think, like, I'll bet there's a substantial
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  Speaker 1: layer of horse manure under the streets of New York
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  Speaker 1: that make up like that initial stratum of of of Earth,
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  Speaker 1: the pupa sphere. Thank oh wait, that would be an
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  Speaker 1: utter space. No, no, because the lithospheres. Yes, so you
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  Speaker 1: were dead on thank you the pupa sphere. Um, things
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  Speaker 1: change a little bit. The New York institutes a Department
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  Speaker 1: of Health and a group of basically an army of
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  Speaker 1: cleaning guys, very much like the um the garbage man
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: that Homer Simpson envisions in the in the It's the
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  Speaker 1: Garbage Commissioner episode. I can't remember which one it is, Uh,
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  Speaker 1: the Loveday episode is what it is? Okay. Um. These guys,
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  Speaker 1: they're called white wings. They are deployed to clean up
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  Speaker 1: the streets of New York and they do a heck
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  Speaker 1: of a job, and possibly the fact of the the episode,
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  Speaker 1: if I may take it please, this is where the
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  Speaker 1: term cleanliness is next to godliness is coined. Pretty cool.
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  Speaker 1: The New York Department of Health slogan in downtown New
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  Speaker 1: York Josh at the turn of the century. Back then
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  Speaker 1: was a disgusting, filthy place. And yet I love New York.
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  Speaker 1: I love the history New York. We watched that, we
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  Speaker 1: both watched the same Nova video on Typhoid Mary today
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  Speaker 1: and they had photos of mountains of manure pushed to
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  Speaker 1: the sidewalks and uh, sort of like if you've ever
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  Speaker 1: been in New York on garbage day, imagine all those
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  Speaker 1: garbage bags is poop, Yeah, but not pooping bags, just
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  Speaker 1: mound poop. And they were dead animal carcasses. Did you
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  Speaker 1: see that. It was like these boys playing in the
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  Speaker 1: street with just a dead horse right in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of their little stickball bimond guess he was on base
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  Speaker 1: or something. And it was just a foul, disgusting, unclean,
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  Speaker 1: unsanitary place, which, like you said, led to the formation
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  Speaker 1: of the Department of Sanitation, Right, So the Department the
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  Speaker 1: Department of Sanitation. UM was imbued with a lot of
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  Speaker 1: clout from the get go. Yeah. And as you said that,
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  Speaker 1: the Nova documentary on on Typhoid Mary, it's called like
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  Speaker 1: the Most Dangerous Woman in America, but it's also on
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  Speaker 1: YouTube under Typhoid Mary Nova. That's good. It was UM.
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  Speaker 1: But they had a lot of cloud. They could forcibly
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  Speaker 1: inoculate you with these new fangled inoculations. They could forcibly
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  Speaker 1: remove you to a quarantine island, and New York had
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  Speaker 1: a bunch of them. Yeah, that was popular at the time. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but basically your civil liberties could be entirely suspended without
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: any sort of due process of law. Um and you
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  Speaker 1: if you were considered sick. And a lot of this
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  Speaker 1: was based done this new understanding of science of germ
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  Speaker 1: theory thanks to our buddy Louis past year bacteriology yep UM.
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  Speaker 1: So the problem was science reporting hadn't been established yet.
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  Speaker 1: So all of the people who were in charge understood
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  Speaker 1: what was going on. They understood germ theory, they understood innoculations,
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  Speaker 1: they understood force quarantine, but no one had explained it
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  Speaker 1: to the public fully. Right, So it's a recipe for
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  Speaker 1: disaster so there's this thing called typhus or typhoid. I'm sorry,
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  Speaker 1: And apparently they were one and the same until the
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  Speaker 1: nineteenth centuries. About this time, typhus and typhoid typhoid fever
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  Speaker 1: were separated. But typhoid fever fever, which is the star
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  Speaker 1: of this co star of this episode. Sure, Um, it's
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  Speaker 1: particularly nasty, isn't it It is? Josh, we're talking not
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: just ordinary diarrhea, but doubled over cramping, painful diarrhea. I
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  Speaker 1: think you'd call that violent diarrhea, violent diarrhea, high fee her,
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  Speaker 1: red rashes, sleeplessness, death if you don't treat it. A
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  Speaker 1: lot of people through history have been stricken with it,
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  Speaker 1: including Mary Todd, Lincoln, Georgia O'Keeffe, Rabbi Shankar, Frank I
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  Speaker 1: really uh, Frank McCourt, author, and Wilbur Wright actually of
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  Speaker 1: the Wright Brothers fame died from typhoid fever. Wow, pretty
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  Speaker 1: sad And that was I mean, that's a scant, uh
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  Speaker 1: sampling from a long long list of famous people that
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  Speaker 1: have Those are the people who count who had typhois.
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  Speaker 1: I think Lincoln's son actually died as from it as well,
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  Speaker 1: But I don't think Mary Todd Lincoln died from it, Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but you can know she died of um or something
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  Speaker 1: like that is what they would have called hysterics, right, Okay. Um, So,
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  Speaker 1: before we started to get a handle on typhoid fever,
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  Speaker 1: it's by the way, it's a um it's caused by
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  Speaker 1: the bacterium Salmonella TYPEE. It's a type of Salmonella UM.
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  Speaker 1: And before we got a hand on it with antibiotics,
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  Speaker 1: apparently twelve of people died from typhoid. So it's a
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  Speaker 1: big public health problem. Yeah, New York especially there were
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  Speaker 1: four thousand new cases per year and killed one in
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  Speaker 1: ten people at the time or one in remember that
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  Speaker 1: god that nationwide? Uh yeah, as I understand it before antibiotics.
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  Speaker 1: So um, let's even just say tempercent. That's a big
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  Speaker 1: public health problem. And because it's spread by the bacterium salmonella.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Did that come out weird? Because it did in my
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: head slightly a little bit of the lazy tongue there,
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  Speaker 1: because because of because it's spread through salm manella or
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: because it's a results of salmonella, it's very very easily
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  Speaker 1: spread from handling your own poop e g. Using the bathroom,
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  Speaker 1: not washing your hands and then handling food, uncooked food specifically. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it was normally considered to be like a disease of
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  Speaker 1: the lower classes. Yeah, until nineteen oh six. Was it
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  Speaker 1: chuck the summer of nineteen oh six in a in
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  Speaker 1: a wealthy quarter of the United States on Long Island
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  Speaker 1: called Oyster Bay, Billy Joels film, I believe it's neither
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  Speaker 1: here nor there. That's one extra fact you just gave everybody.
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  Speaker 1: That's true. Uh. Yeah, when it when it happened in uh,
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  Speaker 1: Oyster Bay, it was a much bigger deal because it
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  Speaker 1: was more closely associated with let's say, the Lower east
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  Speaker 1: Side tenement housing, the filth of Lower Manhattan at the time.
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  Speaker 1: They've cleaned all that up now, Um, it's expense. What
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  Speaker 1: you get though, when you're in Oyster Bay is you
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  Speaker 1: get wealthy families who can spend a little money, and
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  Speaker 1: that's what you had. In the case of the Thompson family,
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  Speaker 1: they were afraid that they would not be able to
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  Speaker 1: rent out the house that they were living in because, uh,
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  Speaker 1: people were getting sick in that house over and over
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  Speaker 1: and over and they couldn't figure it out. They'd decided
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  Speaker 1: to hire an investigator who turned out to be a
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  Speaker 1: very prominent figure in this case name Dr George Soper,
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  Speaker 1: a sanitation engineer and UH epidemiologists, one of the first
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  Speaker 1: epidemiologists really looking to make his career well, he already had.
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  Speaker 1: He had a reputation um of of you know, being
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  Speaker 1: able to track any illness back to his source. So
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  Speaker 1: this family, the Thompson family, is that the one who
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  Speaker 1: owned the house or the one who's who got sick.
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  Speaker 1: They owned the house, and I believe some family members
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  Speaker 1: had also gotten sick. Okay, So but there's a family
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  Speaker 1: that rented it originally. That's where the typhoid outbreak first happened.
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  Speaker 1: So maybe maybe they were just a homeowner. The Thompson
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  Speaker 1: family hired Soper I believe, yeah, and said, hey, we
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  Speaker 1: can't rent this house anymore because people are dying from
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  Speaker 1: typhoid concerned, right, Yeah, So Soaper gets on the case,
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  Speaker 1: starts um finds the family where the typhoid outbreak occurred,
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  Speaker 1: and arts interviewing the heck out of him, and he's stumped.
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  Speaker 1: He can't figure it out, like, where did this thing
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  Speaker 1: come from? There? These are clearly patient zeros right here,
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  Speaker 1: like nobody else on the Yster Bay had it before
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  Speaker 1: then they didn't bring it with them from the city.
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  Speaker 1: There's somebody missing, there's something missing. And he finally says,
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  Speaker 1: have I talked to everybody who was in this house
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  Speaker 1: in the summer of nineteen o six and they said
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  Speaker 1: you should talk to typhoid Mary. I don't know. I
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  Speaker 1: didn't think of that, because what you know, what he
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  Speaker 1: did was he interviewed kitchen staff, and it turns out
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  Speaker 1: that there was a former employee that was no longer there,
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  Speaker 1: Mary Mallon, And he said, wait a minute, you know,
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  Speaker 1: maybe I should check this lady out. Turns out she
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  Speaker 1: loved to serve this ice cream and fresh peaches, which
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  Speaker 1: is uncooked, and that was her I guess her. She
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  Speaker 1: was noted for that dessert, right. But even more incriminating
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  Speaker 1: than the dessert is the idea that when he looked
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  Speaker 1: into her history, she'd worked for eight families in ten years,
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  Speaker 1: and six of those families said had typhoid outbreaks. So
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  Speaker 1: he began to think that there was something special about
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  Speaker 1: Mary Mallen and and that she was what's called a
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  Speaker 1: healthy carrier, meaning um and and I'm just gonna paraphrase
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: this awesome way that nova doc put it right, when
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: you get typhoid fever, there's almost always a clear winner.
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  Speaker 1: If the bacteria wins, you die, and if you if
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  Speaker 1: you win, if your immune system wins, the bacteria dies.
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  Speaker 1: But there's sometimes where there's a stalemate where your immune
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  Speaker 1: system continues to function and you live and the bacteria
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  Speaker 1: continues to live. In your sister to him, which means
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  Speaker 1: you're healthy, but you're also extremely contagious. And that's what
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  Speaker 1: Soaper came to believe Mary Mallen was. So she was
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  Speaker 1: technically she actually had typhoid fever, but her immune system
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  Speaker 1: was able to suppress all of it except the killing
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  Speaker 1: of all the bacteria part right, So pretty cool, Soper cool,
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  Speaker 1: but interesting because this is brand new. Yeah, and this
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  Speaker 1: guy's on the cutting edge of this kind of thinking. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And he knew like, potentially she could be the face
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  Speaker 1: of bacteriology. The first bacteriology lab had just set up
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  Speaker 1: in New York City and it was a burgeoning, uh
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  Speaker 1: not industry but science. So he was like, man, this
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  Speaker 1: is really gonna put me on the map if I
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  Speaker 1: can prove this at least so he he didn't have
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  Speaker 1: any training in science reporting either, though, did he he
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: didn't have training in people skills student either. He goes
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  Speaker 1: to her and he's like, I finally found you. I
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  Speaker 1: believe you're infected with typhoid. So I need stamples of
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: your stool, your urine and your blood. By the way,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: my name is George, soaper good to me. And she's like, oh, no,
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  Speaker 1: you're not. Yeah. So it's about this time that that
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Mary Mallen. We should describe who she is, at least
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: go ahead. Mary Mallen was Irish. She or Irish came
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: over as a teenager by herself. She was born in
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  Speaker 1: the poorest town county in Ireland, and Ireland at that time,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: especially in the poorest county not a great place to be,
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  Speaker 1: also dirty, also lots of death and dying in filth
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  Speaker 1: and disease. And she was born in eighteen sixty nine,
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  Speaker 1: so I think that's on the heels of the Potato famine,
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  Speaker 1: if not still in the middle of it. So she
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  Speaker 1: comes over as a teenager, lives with her aunt and
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  Speaker 1: her uncle who passed away, and then is basically on
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  Speaker 1: her own in New York, and by all accounts, as
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a result of how she grew up and then being
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: on her in New York. She was very, very tough,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: in fiery and independent and resourceful. Like had it been
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: anyone else, this might not have gone down like this.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: They picked, literally eat not picked. But as it turns out,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: it sounds like she was the toughest, most obstinate, stubborn,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: fiery woman in New York City, right. And but she
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: was also good at what she did. She worked her
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: way up in the domestic servant classes to the pinnacle
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: of it. A cook in that era in the domestic
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: in domestic service, and sort of manager of the kitchen staff. Well,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: not just that, almost the whole house, basically the all
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of the servants. The cook was pretty much at the top,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: maybe tied with the butler, depending on the house. But um,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: she was a cook for all these these families, and
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: not just you know, families that could afford a cook,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: but like very wealthy families. Um, she was good at
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: her at her job. But she took no guff from
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: any man. And when souper came and told her that
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: he wanted her feces, she chased him off with a
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: carving fork. Supposedly, that's how Super reported it. Yeah, and
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: you know, we'll get into her specifics later and she
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: got a real bad rap. But at the time there was,
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: like you said, there was no understanding on the public's
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: behalf of this, this whole zero I'm sorry, healthy carrier
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: is not even proven yet. So I mean, what is
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: she supposed to do? Just say like, sure, I'll go
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: with you, stranger, take my poop and and put me
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: in a quarantine. Yeah, so she thought it like she
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: probably had every right to right most initial though, wouldn't
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: normally you know, brandish a fork a carving fork on somebody.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: But again it's lost to history whether she really did
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: do that or not. A good story. So Super takes
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: off and he's not one to let his career just
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: kind of slip through his fingers, and he goes to
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the New York Commissioner of Health, Herman Biggs. So Biggs
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: was he was the one. He was the first one,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and he was the one who was like, oh, by
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the way, we can come into your house and forcibly
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: inoculate you and your children if we want, and we
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: will do that too, if we if we think that
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: it's in the interest of the public health. So Biggs
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: was very sympathetic to Soaper's description of the story. Of
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: this crazy Irish woman who was just patient zero and
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: more than one outbreak um and basically needed to be
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: dealt with. Yeah, so he ordered a one of his
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: case workers, a few a few cops in an ambulance
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: out to where Mary lived a tenement. Yeah. Josephine Baker
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: was the inspector and not the dancer. No, but she
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: apparently was pretty tough lady as well. She started her
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: own rainbow family. Oh really yeah. Oh, and you know,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: we should also point out one of the reasons that
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Mallon was so upset initially was that she got the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: feeling they were essentially calling her dirty an unsantit here
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: because he explained to her like, oh, you go poop
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: and then you get boop in your hands and you
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: handle peaches that you feed people, and so she was
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: very uh, she was upset that they felt like they
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: were picking on her cleanliness. She just a dirty Irish
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: im mcgrinners exactly. They were you know, dirty drunks and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: causing problems and that was just the stereotype at the
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: time and she wasn't like that, she said, right. So, um,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Soaper goes to Biggs Bigs orders some people out. They
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: used their power and grab Mary. Well, she hides out
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: in the house for a while though okay, like it
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: took three hours to find her. Well when they finally did,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: apparently it took all either three or four cops to
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: drag her to the ambulance and then the the female
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: case workers sat on her for the whole ride to
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: this hospital, this quarantine hospital, where she was kept for
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: a while. And like you said, it's it just happened
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: to work out that the person who was who was
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: typhoid Mary was this very stubborn, obstinate, self assertive woman
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: from Ireland, and she came about at a time where
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: there was a big question about public health, like you know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: where do an individual, civil rights and public the greater
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: public good begin. That's still going on, it still is.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: But she forced this, this conversation into the national spotlight
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: starting about now. Yea. So they keep her, they test her.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: They they're like, you need to poop into this bag
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: right now, and she did um and they tested it
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: and they said, well, this thing's lousy with typhoid. They
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: called her stool a factory for typhoid. Yeah, And what
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: they did was they said, here's the deal, give up
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: cooking because that's how you're transmitting this and we'll let
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: you go. And so did they say that immediately, but
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: not necessarily from the document, I think they initially offered
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: her that deal that she refused, which was one reason
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: why she was you know, lambasted in the in the
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: public later on in newspapers. But again, at the time,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: she had managed to climb up out of the uh,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: you know, poor conditions that she was living in an
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Ireland and get a really good job and one that
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: she was good at and she didn't want to have
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: to learn something new and start over again. So at
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the time, you know, like later on I can doll
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: out some of the blame on her, but early on
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: she still feels well, right, it's like, I'm not sick.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: This doesn't make any sense. What does this healthy carrier thing? Yes, yeah,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: she was not buying it at all, and she basically
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: came to believe that the Public Health Department had a
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: vendetta against her personally and felt quite persecuted. Um. So
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: when she said no, she wasn't going to stop cooking,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: they said, okay, well we're gonna take you to a
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: nice little island called North Brother Island. It's not a
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: nice island. Seven. They took her there in quarantine her
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: their North Brother Island is a or it was a
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: tuberculosis hospital, quarantine quarantine hospital, i should say. And she
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: didn't have tuberculosis, and she wasn't even sick, she didn't
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: have any symptoms, and yet she was being kept here
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: against her will on North Brother Island, which you sent
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: a killer urban exploration photo spread that I want everybody
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: to go check out. It's creepy. It's on Gothamist dot
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: com and that's g O T H A M I
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: S T. And it's titled a Trip to the Abandoned
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: North Brother Island. It is so cool. Yeah, located there
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: was a riverside hospital and initially there was nothing there
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: and they said, hey, the idea of island quarantines was
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: pretty popular at the time, so we should build a
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: hospital there so we can treat these people. But um,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: North Brother Island sort of gained a reputation over the
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: years because one it was I mean, it was much
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: more than tuberculosis. It was like later on it was
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: like hero and junkies were treated their syphilis like any
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: kind of nasty disease or addiction they would dump you
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: on at Riverside Hospital. It was in asylum. It basically was.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: It was sort of like, uh, what's the DiCaprio, shutter island,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: sendal island. Um. But they had a hard time staffing
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: it with real doctors for a while because actors understandably
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: didn't want to work there, so they had nurses only
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: for a time. Eventually there was a public campaign to
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: clean it up and to build better buildings and change
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: his rep which sort of worked, sort of didn't. But um,
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: in New York City at the time, especially on the
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Lowery Side and where poor people lived, it had a
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: very bad reputation as you don't want to go there
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: because you go there and you don't come back. People
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: were afraid of it, right. So that's where they send
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: this Mary Malin off to so and when she gets there, um,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: she starts trying to get out. She hired a escaping
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: right now, using legal channels. She um. She she hired
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a lab, a private lab, and started sending them samples
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of her stool and they were testing it and they
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: were not getting the same results. Her boyfriend would sneak
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: her poop to the lab and they weren't getting the
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: same results that the Public Health Department said that they
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: were getting UM. As far as her being a factory
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: for typhoid right, which could have been a false negative right.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: It could have been because they said that you don't
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: always find it in the testing, and that's what they
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: said in the documentary. I believe so. But there was
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: a discrepancy and it was enough for her to get
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: her day in court New York Supreme Court. So she
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: makes her way. She's allowed to UM to leave the
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: island to go for her court date, and basically the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Public Health Department was like, look, she's a she's a
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: healthy carrier, and she's a public health threat. And Mary's like,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: these people are holding me against my will. And the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: New York Supreme Court said, you're a public health threat.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Go back to North Brother Island. Yeah. And around the
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: same time, it started getting newspaper coverage courtesy of William
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Randolph Hurst, who may have financed her UM law. That's
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: crazy her legal expenses. Imagine it was. It was great
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: for the papers, So yeah, I could see him throw
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: a little money toward it, totally. But that's where she
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: was dubbed typhoid Mary, and that's where the public cinement
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: really swung because she was painted as someone who was
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: willingly giving people typhoid fever. Right, Well, no, she was.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: She was called typhoid Mary because they were protecting her
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: um her identity as well. That didn't work too well. No,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: so Mary Um goes back to North brother Island and
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: is there um for another Well, she was there for
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: three years total, I believe, and on in the third year,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: New York City got a new health commissioner and he
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: was not about basically squashing people's civil rights letter, so
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: he not. He not only freed her, he got her
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a job. Yeah, and a lot of people while she
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: was incarcerated, and it wasn't incarceration, I guess. Um there
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: were a lot of people that did cry out for
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: her release at times, um public officials even, but the
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Department of Health basically it was such a unique case.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: They wanted to experiment on her and said, now we're
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: gonna test do some tests on her and not let
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: her out. Well, they did do some tests on or
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: they they thought that perhaps the gall block her gallbladder
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: was the culprit. So they were like, we're gonna take
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: your gallbladder out, and she's like nobody's touching me. She's
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: afraid they're gonna kill her, but it could have to.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: They did forcibly um medicate her. They tried some stuff out,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: and she said that she wrote in a diary that
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: she if they keep this up for much longer, she'll
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: surely die because just such as the side effects were
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: so horrid. So it wasn't just like, hey, stay in
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: this cottage, there's a nice view of the water. It was.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: It was rough for her in addition to the civil
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: liberties being squashed exactly, and so, as you pointed out,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: the new Commission comes in letterly of public health and
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: a bit more sympathetic, like you said, he found her
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: a job and laundry, which apparently was the bottom of
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: the barrel for for a woman a woman's career aspirations
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and in domestic servant like no money, like the lowest pay,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: the worst work. And she was like this sucks. I
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: don't want to do this. I don't want to work
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: in the laundry. Did you know that Atlanta has one
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: of the taxi drivers in Atlanta? Um is a Ghanese king. Now,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: why that's what I thought of when I um, when
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I when I was reading about that when when she
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: got a job in the laundry, it's like she worked
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: her way past that. She's way past that. There's a
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Ghanese king coming to America who operates a cab here
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Sint none but ultra burma. That was a
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: good movie. I could quote it from heart, I think
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: in full let's start. Okay, bark like a dog. All right,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: So back to Mary. Where are we here. She's just
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: been released or he offered her the job, right, yeah,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: and she's out and she's yeah, but she's making contact
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: with the health department there, like we need to be
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: able to keep up with you and make sure we
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: know what you're doing and everything. And then they're they're like,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: we know where she is, we know what she's doing.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: We talked to her every day, and okay, we lost her. Yeah,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: we don't know where she gets anymore. Yeah, it's pretty
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: cool at the time. He could disappear. And if you
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: don't leave afoarding address or it's like well yah, no
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Google searching going on there, you could disappear into the
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: folds of Daniel day Lewis is overacting. So a few
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: years after this, Josh, after they had lost her Uh.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Dr Soapers brought in again to investigate another typhoid outbreak
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: at uh the upscale hospital, Sloane Hospital, and I think
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: it was a Baby Birthen hospital at the time, maternity hospital.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And uh what they discovered was Mary is cooking in
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the kitchen at the hospital, yeah, under an assumed name.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Doctors and nurses were sick and I believe two of
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: them died. And they said, you know, um, you're in
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: big trouble this time. Yeah. But not only did they
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: discover it was Soaper himself was called into the case.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: This is like Lama's a rob and he exactly, it
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: is very much like that. Um. And he comes to
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the hospital and he recognizes Mary by sight as one
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: of the cooking Steffens, Like you were kidding me. She's
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: whipping up her ice cream and beaches and just stops
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: like a mid stroke, like um, her hands awkward. So um.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: This time she goes willingly. She knows that that it's
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: it's over, it's done. She still doesn't believe that she
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: is the um, this a carrier or the problem, but
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: she knows that they think she is and that she's
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: broken some sort of horrendous loss. It was kind of
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: sad at that point. From the way uh it was
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: described in the documentary, she was just sort of like,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, all the fight of this fiery woman was gone,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and she's just like, I just can't fight this anymore.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Take me. And part of it, also, I imagine it
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: was public opinion turned against her. Like you said, the
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: first time she was incarcerated at UM North Brother Island,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of public outcry. This time there's a
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: lot of public outcry. But it was against her because
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: she had willfully and knowingly gone back into cooking UM
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and had gotten more people sick. Yeah, and I think
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: fifty something cases were attributed to her in three deaths. Yeah,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I think fifty two was what I read. UM. And
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: you know, we gotta say, like, I'm defending her in
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but she They gave her a
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: few pretty good deals along the way that she did
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: not take, which was a to give up cooking be UM.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I think at one point they said, why don't you
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: just move to Connecticut with your sister, And she was like,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I don't have a sister, and they're like, sure you do, Jane,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: She's like, wait, you haven't a stroke exactly so she
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: didn't take him up on that offer, and um Sober
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: promised her of the profits of a book that he
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: would write about her and about the situation, and she
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: was like, no, no, no, it wasn't that weird. Anthony
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Bourdain is one of the experts in that Nova documentary
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: A little odd. Yeah, I guess he knows his typhoid Mary.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: He lives on Oyster Bay. I guess with Billy Joel.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: So the legacy um of typhoid Mary is this great
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: debate over how much civil liberty, how many how many
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: civil rights does a person get to keep when they
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: pose some sort of public health threat? And I guess
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: the answer to that is contagion. Yes, have you seen it?
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: I have not. You did the other night, right, it
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: was good? Frightening? No, it was definitely like, I don't
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: My back was tense the whole time. It wasn't frightening,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: but it was kid. That was a really good editorial
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: piece too that I read I sent you, um We're
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: basically this could have gone down in so many different ways.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: It was sort of like the perfect storm of headstrong woman, uh,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: healthy guy that didn't have a lot of people skills.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: They said, if that or his opinion was, if that
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: initial meeting had have gone down differently, the whole history
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: might be rewritten. But it went down as them butting
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: heads and just got worse from there. Pretty interesting. So
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: typhoid Mary was she a bad person? Josh, I can't.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: I reserved judgment on historical figures. Okay, I don't. I
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: don't know enough about him. Yeah, I think you can
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: only judge your contemporaries. Really, all right, what about me?
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: I reserved judgment on on podcasters? Yeah. So, Um, if
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: you want to know more about type woid Mary, you
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: can watch Nova's excellent documentary The Most Dangerous Woman in America. UM.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: If you want to know the origin of the word quarantine,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: you should go back and listen to our Black Death episode.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: But if you haven't heard it before and you've read,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: don't bother emailing in. I know already, I know, I know,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. You can also look up the how stuff
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Works article who was typhoid Mary? T Y P H
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: O I D space M A R Y question mark?
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: You want to type that into the search bar at
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com And that means it's time
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: for a listener mail. They should do a good movie
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: about that. I can't believe they haven't. Yeah, this is
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: like great. At the very least, there has to be
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: a book on Soper, Like this is the kind of
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: thing that the public is eating up right now, you know,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: thanks to this um Stars, thanks to this economic collapse.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: You know, the Stars Guard Starstard. Did you ever see
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: that live Skit was during the Stars outbreak and uh
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: so ours Guard. The actor what's his name, Peter, He
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: was on their pitching. It was like a little informercial
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: and he's pitching the Stars Guard Stars Gard. Awesome. Alrighty Josh,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this, uh Moon smack down the Nicest Moon.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: The nicest Moon's back down. We got all right because
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: we got a lot of them and this guy was
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: actually really really it's over behind about it. Guys. Love
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the podcast. I listened as I ride my bike to
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: and from work past the Golden Gate Bridge in San
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Francisco on my way to the Moon. Learning interesting facts
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: makes my day a little better. However, I had to
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: send a note about a couple of mistakes in the
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Moon podcasts. You got the current theories about the formation
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: of the moon and how it affects Earth's precession right
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: as far as I know. And those are really the
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: hardest things to understand. Well done, Yeah, but you did
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: perpetuate a few minutes. Number one, the Moon doesn't rotate
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: and is dragged along by the Earth. Well sort of.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: The Moon is held in place by the Earth's gravity,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: but it does rotate. The reason it doesn't appear to rotate,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: which is what we were trying to say, uh, is
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: because its period of rotation is exactly the same as
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: its period of revolution around the Earth, about twenty nine days.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: It's tidally locked, which brings me two point Number two.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: The moon has a quote dark side that is never illuminated.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Not true. I don't remember seeing that. Did we say that?
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: We must have because everyone said that we did. Maybe
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: we didn't save this. Okay, we've let people believe that
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: we don't know it, all right. The moon has one
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: face we never see from Earth but is not permanently
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: in darkness. That's known as the far side of the moon.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: So it's Gary Larson, not Darth Vader. Huh uh. Number three,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: we have tides because the moon quote pulls up on
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the water on the Earth and pulls up on the
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Earth underneath as well. Definitely not true. While the Moon's
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: gravity does pull up the Earth and its water, the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: effect is minuscule compared to the Earth's own gravity. It's
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the horizontal differential in the Moon's gravity across the Earth
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: that causes the water to slide towards and away the
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: direction of the Moon. So the water slide sideways, not up. Wow,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. And that is from Chris b and
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: he he was very cool about it. Um. And he says, ps,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: I'm a little worried about going back and listening to
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: the Sun podcast because the Sun is way more complicated
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: than the Moon than Chris. Don't do it. Don't do it,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: just skip it. Brother. Yeah, go listen to Cannonball Run. Yeah,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: that's a good one, no mistakes that. It's a great,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: great one. Or Twinkies that was pretty good too. Yeah, muppets, Yeah,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: anything but the Sun, anything but that. Um. I guess
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: if you have a correction, we want to hear it. Um.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: We we have. We've been reading him again now lately.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I think that's a good chuck. I forgot all about him,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: I forgot about being wrong. Well, we were right for
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: a good stretch. Well we weren't doing ones like on
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the moon or whatever. Yeah, these tough ones are hard.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Yes they are. Yes. If you have a correction, you
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: can tweet it to us at s Y s K podcast.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: You can um see us on Facebook at Facebook dot com,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: slash suff you should know, and you can send us
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: a plain old fashion email at Stuff podcast at how
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.