Cure for Typhoid Carriers?

Mary Mallon, a peripatetic cook, was a famed typhoid carrier, i.e., she was a walking factory of typhoid germs, to which she herself was immune. It was known that Typhoid Mary gave the disease to 57 people before she was finally caught and confined to New York City's North Brother Island, where she died in November 1938. Last week Health News, bulletin of the New York State Health Department, reported a successor to Typhoid Mary. "Like Mary Mallon, Sally is a cook by trade." At the age of 23 she had an attack of typhoid fever. In the 34 years since her recovery she has spread the disease wherever she handled food. Recently, when Sally was caught and fined, health officers traced eleven cases of typhoid fever to her cooking.

Best-known method for curing typhoid carriers is cholecystectomy, or removal of the gall bladder, chief breeding ground for the bacilli. But such drastic operations are sometimes unsuccessful.

Last week Drs. William Saphir and Katharine Myrta Howell of Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital had good news for Sally and the estimated 15,000 other U. S. typhoid carriers. They announced, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "surprising success" in purging a carrier so that she stayed purged.

Year ago, the doctors discovered that a young nurse in the hospital was a carrier. Sulfanilamide and other standard drugs did no good; they tried giving her iodophthalein, a dye used to show up the gall bladder in X-ray pictures. Next day the germs had vanished. They have not been heard from since.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.