Typhoid fever is a bacterial disease caused by Salmonella typhi. Symptoms of typhoid fever are similar to other gastrointestinal illnesses and include fever, headache, nausea, constipation or diarrhea, loss of appetite and a rose-colored rash on the body. Typhoid fever spreads from person to person via contaminated food and water, and via the fecal-oral route. The bacteria only lives in humans, not animals.
In 1896, Germans Richard Pfeiffer and Wilhelm Kolle proved that inoculation with killed typhoid bacteria resulted in immunity. A few months later Almroth E. Wright published a paper with a similar finding. Wright developed the first vaccine. Army physician Frederick F. Russell developed the first typhoid vaccine in the United States in 1909.
Perhaps the most famous case of typhoid was “Typhoid Mary,” a woman named Mary Mallon who lived in New York City and worked as a cook in 1906. She was a carrier of typhoid fever but never got sick herself. The New York City Department of Health had tried to isolate her, but she assumed a fake name and continued working in 1915. She died in 1938 after causing 10 outbreaks, 51 cases, and 3 deaths.
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A circa-1905 quarantine sign from the Connecticut Health Department