Over 50,000 positive cases, the bar of 1,600 dead crossed… After Bergamo, Mulhouse and Madrid, New York has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic which is sweeping the entire planet, and is now hitting the United States hard. . New figures from China indicate that four out of five carriers will be asymptomatic. And responsible for half of the transmissions.
At the start of the 20th century, another asymptomatic person was faced with a tragic fate… It was hot in this summer of 1906 on Long Island, a privileged vacation spot for the wealthy New Yorkers, where it was not uncommon to meet the president from the United States Theodore Roosevelt. An ideal time to taste the famous peach ice cream concocted by the new Irish cook, Mary Mallon, which the Warrens have just hired, and whom they have taken to the beautiful rented residence in Oyster Bay. But on August 27, daughter Warren fell seriously ill, followed by six of the eleven family members.
The diagnosis is clear: high fever, nausea, diarrhea ... it's typhoid! This dreaded disease is mainly transmitted by water, but it is rather widespread in the insalubrious districts of the big cities. How could such a fever have contaminated the chic shores of the bay?
The incredible investigation of the "warrior of epidemics"
Worried about his reputation, the owner of the residence where the Warren are lodged, calls on a certain George Soper. This former civil engineer, who became a New York City health inspector, has already earned a solid reputation in the fight against typhoid fever. So much so that he is nicknamed "the warrior of epidemics". Start an incredible investigation worthy of a detective story. It will lead to a major revolution in the knowledge of the spread of epidemics, by bringing to light what we will call "healthy carriers", or asymptomatic ones: they transmit the disease without suffering from it themselves.
Quickly, Soper is intrigued by this Mary Mallon, who left without warning two weeks after the epidemic. He discovers that all the families who hired the cook in their vacation homes between 1900 and 1907 were struck by typhoid. It goes even further: it is through the succulent peach ice cream - the only dish identified as being based on uncooked ingredients - that the cook contaminates its employees.
He sets off in pursuit and finds her four months later in a beautiful home on Park Avenue in Manhattan. But it is impossible for her to make reason of this 37-year-old woman, "six feet tall, blonde with blue eyes, a radiant complexion of health, a rather prominent mouth and jaw," he describes in an article. Faced with the stubbornness of the Irishwoman who refuses any analysis, the support of the police is needed to hospitalize her by force.
It disappears and contaminates again!
Soper was right: Mary Mallon is a good carrier of Salmonella Typhi, the bacillus of typhoid. What amazes scientists is his arrogant health. They have before them the first clinical case of a phenomenon suspected for a long time but never observed: the "healthy carrier". Mary Mallon shelters the typhoid bacillus in her gallbladder, contaminates everyone she approaches ... but never gets sick.
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While quarantined in the grounds of the Riverside Hospital on North Brother, a small island off the Bronx, public opinion is unleashed. Here she is nicknamed "Typhoid Mary". Newspapers accuse this "witch" of poisoning all of New York. But Mary Mallon stands up, denies being contagious. She refuses to have the gallbladder removed, files a trial for forcible confinement, and ends up being released in 1909, against the commitment to no longer exercise her profession as a cook and ... to "wash her hands often"!
VIDEO. How to wash your hands well in 6 steps
Typhoid Mary disappears from circulation. In 1915, typhoid continues to strike in New York. George Soper was called in to help at Sloane Maternity Hospital, where 25 people fell ill (one dies). And who does he fall into in the kitchen? Mary Brown, who is none other than Mary Mallon! The cook is assigned to isolation for life.
She remained in quarantine on North Brother until her death in 1938, at the age of 69, from pneumonia. While the phenomenon of healthy carriers will be definitively validated, and hundreds of cases will be discovered, no one will undergo quarantine for life like Mary Mallon.
The origins of "containment"
It was in the 14th century, after the ravages of the black plague which decimated more than a third of Europe around 1350, that the first quarantine measures were taken against epidemics from the Levant and Asia.
The first maritime city to set it up is Ragusa (Dubrovnik, in Croatia) around 1380, soon followed by Venice in 1423: the Serenissima opens a first lazaretto where travelers suspected of carrying the plague, as well as the goods transported, are isolated.
Why do we speak of “quarantine”, which reappears with the coronavirus under the term of confinement? No doubt because the 40 is very present in the Bible: the 40 days of the Flood, or those that Jesus had spent in the desert.