MARY QUITE CONTRARY - Two

I am of two minds about "Typhoid Mary". The officials could not prove in court that Mary Mallon was spreading typhoid fever. The science of biology had not progressed that far. And that  made her arrest and detention unconstitutional. Thank God they locked her up, anyway - at least for awhile.

After Mary chased George Soper out of the Bowen family kitchen, it would appear that he was no longer welcomed in the house by either Mary or her employer, Mr, Bowen - which makes me wonder if George was as “diplomatic” as he claimed to be.  We know that the next time he tried to talk to Mary, George Soper approached her at the rooming house where she lived. This time he even brought along an actual medical doctor, Doctor Raymond Hobbler. But this did not strengthen his argument. Again Mary refused to hand over her urine, blood or feces. 

Defeated yet again, the Health Department decided to dispatch the assistant commissioner of health, who also managed the smallpox vaccination programs and sanitation issues for the city,  Doctor Sara Josephine Baker.  She brought with her an assistant, an ambulance with a driver and an attendant,  and five police officers.

By  the way; Mary was not a complete fool. She had consulted a chemist – what we would call a pharmacist.  He had examined her and assured Mary she was clear of the disease. So she felt it was the health officials who were crazy. 

So when Mary answered the knock on her rooming house door, and was confronted by Dr Baker and several police officers, she panicked. According to Dr. Baker, “As she lunged at me with the fork, I stepped back, recoiled on the policeman, and so confused matters that, by the time we got through the door, Mary had disappeared.”

They turned the tiny house upside down, and five hours later found Mary hiding in the supply closet of a neighboring house. Wrote Dr. Baker, “(Mary) came out fighting and swearing, both of which she could do with appalling efficiency and vigor…she was maniacal in her integrity…The policemen lifted her into the ambulance and I literally sat on her all the way to (Willard Parker Hospital)…it was like being in a cage with an angry lion.”

At last the health officials could obtain the precious samples. The blood and urine were negative. But the stool was described as “teeming” with "Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi". 

Under the city code 1169, requiring Health officials to avoid causes of disease, and code 1170 giving them the right to place any ill person in isolation, they now restricted Mary Mallon (above, foreground) to the hospital on North Brother Island, in the middle of the East River. She would remain there for almost three years. 

But throughout that time Mary continued to fight back, writing letters and contacting lawyers. The hospital's tests showed 120 out of 163 of her stool samples tested positive for typhoid. So Mary sent her own samples to a private lab and consulted her own physicians. They reported her as free of typhoid. 

As she wrote the courts, “I am an innocent human being. I have committed no crime, and I am treated like an outcast - - a criminal. It is unjust, outrageous, uncivilized. It seems to me incredible that in a Christian community a defenseless woman can be treated in this manner.” Clearly this was not an ignorant woman. 

A photo of patients taken from the hospital on North Brother Island is dominated by a glaring Mary Mallon (above, foreground). No wonder she is glaring because it is a staged photo. Except for her first few days there, Mary was not confined to a bed.  And in the photo she is fully dressed.

Because she was not ill, the hospital provided her a small cottage . But she was still not a woman to be ignored.

The civil engineer George Soper (above) fought back. “The state has the power to compel the ignorant, the selfish, the careless and the vicious to so regulate their lives and property so that they shall not be the source of danger to others. The welfare of the many is the supreme law…” It was an arrogant argument,  which in 1909 swayed Justice Mitchell Erlanger. “While the court deeply sympathizes with this unfortunate woman, it must protect the community.” But the public was now aware of Mary’s predicament, and public pressure began to build for her release.

In 1910 a new commissioner of the NYC Board of Health agreed to release Mary if she promised to no longer work as a cook, and checked in every three months with the board. Mary immediately agreed, and on 20 February, 1909 , she stepped off the ferry from Brothers Island and blended back into the city of New York. She reported to the Health Department a few times and then simply disappeared. She was not heard again for five years. 

In January 1915 there was another outbreak of typhoid fever at the Sloan Maternity Hospital (above). Twenty-five nurses and workers fell sick, two of whom died. Eventually the investigation narrowed to a new cook, named Mrs. Brown. And upon being arrested by the police Mrs. Brown confessed. She was actually Mary Mallon. 

Mr. Soper observed, “Here she was, dispensing germs daily with the food…” The press wanted her tried for murder and the public, which had supported her plea for freedom five years before, were now universal in their condemnation. But Mary herself was unrepentant, telling a reporter, “As there is a God in heaven, I will get justice, somehow, sometime.” She still refused to believe she was the source of infection. She told Life magazine, “I am doomed to be a prisoner for life!” 

And so she was. She was returned to her cottage on North Brother Island, and eventually was given a job helping out in the laboratory. 

Years later, there is Mary (above, right) wearing glasses now, standing next to bacteriologist Emma Sherman. Seeing her you can understand how the police and Doctor Baker had such trouble taking her into custody.  

Mary must have been lonely. She had few visitors, usually only staff members. She never admitted she might be responsible for any illness or deaths, but for twenty-three years she was identified to all as “Typhoid Mary”.  

Then, in December of 1932 she suffered a massive stroke. Now, she was a patient again, and bed ridden. And in 1938 she died. Although she claimed to have never suffered from typhoid fever, her  autopsy revealed her liver was heavily infected with the Typhoid bacteria, which it had been  periodically releasing her entire adult life.  

An autopsy revealed her liver heavily infected with Typhoid bacteria. 

"Typhoid" Mary Mallon is buried in St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx.

Her nemesis,  George Soper (above), was the director of the American Cancer Society from 1923 to 1928. He died on relative obscurity 17 June, 1948, in at the age of 78. 

He must have known that his subject, Mary Mallon (above, left), would be better remembered than he was; which was odd. She just wanted a normal life, while he hungered for fame.

Doctor Sara Josephine Baker (above) was appointed the director New York City's Bureau of Child Hygiene in 1908. 

And when she (above, washing a baby), retired in 1923, New York City had the lowest childhood mortality rate of any major city in the United States. 

During the remainder of her life, Dr. Baker (above) resided in New Jersey with her life partner, novelist Ida Wylie. Between the 50 articles she wrote for profession journals, her 200 magazine articles on children's health and her five books, it is probable Dr. Baker saved hundred's of thousands of children's lives by the time she died in 1945. 

A vaccine, available since 1921, can prevent most Typhoid infections, but has side effects. Since 1946 the standard treatment has been a course of the antibiotic streptomycin, invented by graduate student, Albert Israel Schatz, and stolen by his advisor at Rutgers, Professor Selman Waksman, This can cure an infected patient. Still prevention of infections through public health programs remains the most cost effective method to stop its spread. And nothing developed over the past century would have made life any easier for  "Typhoid" Mary Mallon,   

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MARY QUITE CONTRARY - ONE

I doubt you have ever heard of George Soper, but he is the perfect example of the ways that new technology and new ways of thinking provide an opportunity for an individual to achieve wealth and fame. George was born in 1870 in New York City, just as the population was exploding, and people were noticing that it was not a very healthy place to live. Each year one out of every 36 people in New York City died of disease or accident. In Boston and Philadelphia the rate was one out of every 44. The rate for London and Paris was one out of every 40. The natural question was why the death rate varied at all. No one had ever asked that before, scientifically.  So George did.

George A. Soper (above) graduated from Columbia University in 1899 with a doctorate in the new field of “civil” engineering. He was described as a man of “average build, high wide forehead and hooded eyes that seem foreboding,” which I suppose came from staring down disaster day after day.

On 8 September, 1900 , when a category 4 Hurricane leveled Galveston Island, Texas and killed one third of the human population, one of the unsung heroes was 30 year old Dr. George Soper. He saved thousands of lives in Galveston by quickly redesigning and installing a new municipal water system and preventing the predicted typhoid epidemic which normally followed natural disasters. 

In 1903 he helped stop a typhoid epidemic in Ithaca that had killed 82 in just two months, and then stopped another typhoid outbreak in Watertown, New York. In 1904 he turned his attention to New York City.

George was hired by the Department of Health, and tasked with answering a basic question; what happens to all that human waste dumped into the Hudson and East Rivers? Conventional wisdom was that it all floated out to the ocean. But by releasing floats into the rivers and tracking their journeys over three years, George came to the stunning realization that because of their width and the tides, neither the Hudson or the East River actually flows very much out to sea.  

The floats meandered back and forth for weeks before eventually escaping into the bay.  Since the river did not flush itself, it was not a very good toilet. As George explained to the New York Times, “…immense quantities of poisonous sewage floats for days in the river and bays close to public baths, bathing beaches and the oyster beds of Jamaica Bay, from which 1 million bushels are brought to New York markets every year.” (p. 20, NYT March 14, 1911 Sports) George was obviously preparing the public for the expense of building a new sewage system.

George knew there would be resistance.  “No new taxes!” is not a new battle cry. And he knew opponents to the expense would be nit-picking every word he said. And if you listened carefully you could hear Dr. Soper soften his absolutes, even in that same interview with the Times. 

He continued, “Only recently there was an outbreak of typhoid at the Rockaway Peninsula…In one case we traced the oysters to a dealer who was to have put them into fresh water before selling them. We could not assertion whether or not he kept his promise…”  In other words, George knew the sewage was killing people but he did not yet have the individual case histories or the laboratory work that would establish it to a scientific certainty. 

And that was why, when landlord George Thompson asked Dr. Soper to investigate a single outbreak of typhoid in a  house he was renting in Oyster Bay, Long Island, Dr. Soper jumped at the chance.  

Banker Charles Warren and his family had rented the Thompson guest house (above)  for the summer. On Sunday, 27 August, 1911, one of the Warren daughters had suddenly developed a fever of 105 degrees F, a headache, diarrhea, nausea and a heavy cough.  When she also developed a skin rash a local doctor diagnosed her with typhoid fever.  Quickly Mrs. Warren, a second daughter, two maids and the gardener also came down with the fever.  A Board of Health investigator quickly ascribed the source to a contaminated water supply, but the Thompson family drank from the same supply and they were all fine. Mr. Thompson was convinced the cause could not be the water, in part because, if it was, he would have a very hard time renting that house again.

Dr. Soper agreed with Mr. Thompson, and began his own investigation, but this time in New York City where he intensively interviewed the Warren family in their own home. George had noted that there were eleven people in the Warren household that summer, but only six had developed typhoid. What was different about those six people? What had they done that the five other occupants had not done? Eventually, after hours of interviews, the family remembered a special treat they had eaten for desert one night; peaches. George realized now he had to locate the cook who had washed those peaches, even though everyone was certain, she had not developed typhoid fever.

All the family knew about her was that she was Irish, was middle aged, had dark hair, and was named Mary. She had been provided by an employment agency, which had checked her letters of reference but had not kept them. So George found himself tracking “Mary” the cook through other servants used by the same agency. 

He ran into suspicion and secrecy, and had to travel to Boston and back, but eventually he discovered that her name was Mary Mallon, and she had cooked for seven families over the last seven years. In those families 22 people had developed typhoid fever, and one young girl had died. Soper was now certain he had found a carrier for typhoid, something that been only a theory up to now; Which explains why Dr. Soper was so excited when he found Mary, working as a cook for Mr. Walter Bowen and his family, on Park Avenue.

Soper appeared before Mary (above) in the Bowen kitchen and, “I was as diplomatic as possible, but I had to say I suspected her of making people sick and I wanted specimens of her urine, feces and blood.”  Sounds very diplomatic to me.  Mary would later claim that Soper also told her he was going to write a book about her and offered to split the royalties with her. But whether such a deal was offered or not, Mary’s reaction was swift and definitive. According to Soper, “She seized a carving fork and advanced in my direction.” Soper says he ran from the house, feeling lucky to have escaped.

And to be honest, I do not blame Mary Malone. A strange man has approached her and asked for a sample of her bodily fluids. And worse, he had then accused her of being a typhoid Mary; in fact, the original Typhoid Mary.

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LIVE BAIT Part Three

 

I suppose that the first great scientific insight into Lumbricus terrestris was written by Charles Darwain; “The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through The Action of Worms, With Observations On Their Habits’, which was published in October of 1881. According to the old man (he would die just 6 months later at the age of 73 and this was his last published work), there were 26,886 earthworms per acre in England, and every year those little wigglies passed ten tons of soil through their guts, turning, aerating and fertilizing a new inch of topsoil every five years. “The plough is one of the most ancient and valuable of man’s inventions; but long before he existed the land was regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus ploughed by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as these lowly organized creatures.”

Darwin was so clearly charmed by Lumbricus terrestris that he decided to return the favor. “Worms do not possess any sense of hearing”, he noted. “They took no notice of the shrill notes from a metal whistle, which was repeatedly sounded near them; nor did they of the deepest and loudest tones of a bassoon. They were indifferent to shouts, if care was taken that the breath did not strike them.

"When placed on a table close to the keys of a piano, which was played as loudly as possible, they remained perfectly quiet….When pots containing two worms which had remained quite indifferent to the sound of the piano were placed on this instrument, and the note C in the bass clef was struck, both instantly retreated into their burrows…and when G above the line in the treble clef was struck they again retreated.”. How could you not admire and trust a man who was so utterly and gently fascinated with such a beguiling creature that he was drawn to play the piano for them?

Continued Darwin, “The whole body of the worm is sensitive to contact….Judging by their eagerness for certain kinds of food, they must enjoy the pleasure of eating. Their sexual passion is strong enough to overcome for a time their dread of light. They perhaps have a trace of social feeling, for they are not disturbed by crawling over each other’s bodies, and they sometimes lie in contact…” This man loved his worms. Of course Darwin also cut them open to see what made them tick, but that was the scientist within him. And it is important to note that before Darwin wrote his paper, Lumbricus terrestris was considered a garden pest, and killed on sight. His insights have thus saved millions of worms over the last 150 years; for one thing, few people eat worm pie anymore.

Because of their simple soft body plan the only record we have of the evolution of worms are their lithic trails and fossilized castings – otherwise known as ‘worm poop." We do know that the wigglies' developed at least 550 million years ago, making them pre-pre-Cambrian. That also makes them the ancestors to us and the red-billed oxpecker pecking at ticks on a hippo’s back, the hippo, the tick and everything in between.

By the Cambrian explosion (350 million years ago -more of a fast fuse really) worms had evolved into four groups; flatworms, ribbon worms, round worms and Annelida, or segmented worms. It is the Annelida that includes Lubricous terrestris, the so-called “common European earthworm”, which is hunted with such furor and fancy on the field of the Wallaston School.

Lubricous terrestris is the creature so nice they named it twice. Lubricous is Latin for ‘earthworm’ and terrestris means ‘of the earth’. In North America they are called ‘Night crawlers’, because that is when what they do is visible, or ‘Dew Worms’ because, again,  that is often when and where they are visible. But they are also called Vitials and ‘fish bait’ because that is the only value given to them by  most humans.  And initially I must admit to a certain lack of enthusiasm myself for this creature with 5 hearts, one head but no brain. However, on closer inspection, the behavior of these slimy little wigglers speaks of a creature with hidden attributes.

For example, contrary to “common knowledge”, Lubricous terrestris does not come to the surface when it rains. They come to the surface every summer night, rain or shine. They wiggle out of their shallow borrows to eat, to defecate, and to mate. And when an eagle-eyed American Robin (which is actually a wren) or a droll English black bird stomps about a lawn or garden, weaving their head back and forth, bent upon vermiphagia (worm eating), they are not charming their prey out of the ground. They are maneuvering for a better vantage point, the better to spy discretely down the narrow worm hole to spot the tasty resident slumbering the hot day away near the surface. You might even say the birds go fishing for worms.

The flashing stab of the beak is often followed by a tug of war to determine if the avian gets a meal or if Vitials earns a reprieve. When threatened, Lubricous terrestris extends minute hairs, called setae, and grabs hold of his burrow walls as if his life depended on it, which it does. The bird tugs. The worm resists. Usually the bird wins. Sometimes, if the worm is slimy enough and quick enough, the worm slides back into mother earth as if in a miniature dramatization of the novel “Dune”.

In the occasional case of a tie, occasionally everybody wins. When the worm snaps into two pieces the bird gets a protein rich meal and, if the worm keeps it's head (end) it grows a new tail, eventually. But if the remorseless carnivore gobbles down the head end or stuffs it into the upturned beaks of her offspring, the wiggling remainder left behind is pretty much worm meat..

In the heavy rain Lubricous terrestris does come to the surface during daylight; but why? The logical answer is, of course, to avoid drowning. Lacking even a single lung, Lubricous terrestrisis has no place to hold their breath. This would appear to be a serious design flaw and if Lubricous terrestris did not have such an impressive survival record I would have thought they were surely on the verge extinction; proof yet again, that evolution has no respect for human logic. But more to the logical point, as any freshwater fisherman can tell you, a Night crawler can live for a surprising long time suspended under water, perhaps indefinitely. We may never know how long they can survive submerged because what usually kills them is the enormous fishing hook jammed through their bodies; that, or hopefully, being eaten by a fish, which is quicker.

All of which begs the question: how do you “charm” such a creature? If rising to the surface in daylight is so often suicidal, why do they do it on the Wallaston School's worm pitch? The recommended technique for worm charming offers a clue. IFCWCAP Rule number seven states that, “A garden fork (in American-ese, a pitch fork) may be stuck into the ground and vibrated by any manual means to encourage worms to the surface”. The process clearly works, as proven by the legendary Tom Shufflebotham, of Chesire, England, who at the first championship in 1980, charmed 511 worms in the 30 minutes allotted time. But why did Tom’s method work so well? Not being able to ask Lubricous terrestris we can only surmise. So we shall.

As stated earlier, Lubricous terrestris has no brain, no lungs and no ears. But they are not without a perception of reality. They have rudimentary “light sensitive cells” that let them distinguish between light and dark. They are also able to use those powerful and  sensitive ‘setae’ to detect the vibrations of burrowing, ravenous grubs or even something as massive, horrifying and relentlessly hungry as a shrew or a mole. So obviously, Lubricous terrestris only leaves it's burrow in daylight when it becomes more dangerous to stay underground. So worm charming, to the worm, must resemble those wild fires set by Native Americans, which drove the terrified, stampeding buffalo over a cliff; except, of course, the worms are “put back” after they stampede to the surface of the Wallaston Primary School . Alas, the buffalo were not.

It was that venerable optimist Ann Sexton who wrote merrily on “The Flurry of Flowers and Worms”; “Bit of the field on my table, close to the worms, who struggle blinding, moving deep in their slime, moving deep into God’s abdomen, moving like oil through water, sliding through the good brown.” But this charming poetic view of our wiggly little friends’ was countered in 1923 by the far more prosaic poet William Stevens, when he gave them voice in his couplet on the Princess Badroulbadour, who had married  Aladdin in "A Thousand and One Nights”. Said Mr. Steven’s worms, “Out of the tomb, we bring Badrouldour, within our bellies, we her chariot”. The passage reveals the function of most “charming stories”, to camouflage an unpleasant reality. Worms are not likely to be “charmed” in the conventional sense by a process that mimic’s their worst terrors. You might as well describe a lion stalking a child on the African Savanna as “human charming”. But that may be taking worm charming far too seriously, which has been known to happen.

On average Lumbricus terrestrsis lives four to eight years in the wild, assuming there is no intervention from a ravenous Robin. For Earthworms seem to have a double lock on evolutionary success; they are detritvorous, and hermaphroditic. Once they reach sexual maternity, at about one year of age, Lumbricus terrestrsis wiggles from one brief sexual encounter after another, always on the surface, lining up side by side, head to tail with their “mate”. And they are indifferent as to the sex of their partner, which is okay since their partner's sex is bisexual, just like theirs.

Once their sexual organs are in joint contact, the happy pair cover themselves with a mucus wrapping and exchange eggs and sperm. They then separate, never to “see” each other again…probably, but then who the heck really knows – least of all, the worms? Eventually they produce a mucous sheath from their Clitellum (the bump about 1/3 of the way up from their tail). This slides forward over the ovum, where it captures an egg, and then over the packet of sperm, stored since the worm’s last brief encounter on a dewy summer night.

Then the Lumbricus terrestris works the entire sticky clump over its head-end and abandons it as a lemon shaped amber colored egg or cocoon in the soil. The average worm produces up to 80 cocoons in a year, which, depending on soil moisture and temperature, hatch in as little as 3 weeks, or not until next spring. And it is by this convoluted mechanism that Lumbricus terrestrsis, described by Aristotle as the “gut of the soil”, has conquered the earth, and us..

Our dependence upon worms is illustrated by Ms. Celia Warren who wrote the following lyrical amusement; “Noah let his sons go fishing, Only on the strictest terms: Sit still, keep quiet and concentrate, We’ve only got two worms”. On such a precarious foundation is the American $100 million live bait industry balanced, on the back of a creature without a spine which sells for a few pennies each even in the derivatives devalued America. And that is only the beginning of our debt to this creature underfoot. 

In High Ridge, Missouri, the Jefferson County Public Library holds an annual Worm Race, won once  by a wiggler named River. And since 2000 the “Worm Gruntuin’” festival has been a tourist attraction in Sopchoppy, Florida, including a ball and the crowning of a “Worm Gruntin’ Queen”, who, presumably, along with her other duties, is charged with droppin’ her final “g’s”. “Grunters” drive a wooden stake into the ground and “whack” it rhythmically, to coax the worms to abandon their burrows, and is probably just as effective although not nearly as attractive a sport as “Charming”.

There is a variation on “Charming” practiced in the English community of Devon which encourages the use of the stimulants outlawed in Wallaston; water, tea, beer and ale. Claims an Wallaston organizer, “The worms just get drunk and drown.”  The Devon wormers even proposed “The Olympic Worm Charming Championship” to be held in 2012 on Edlesborough Green in Devon. It was to coincide with the British Olympics, but the purists at the Wallaston school chose not to endorse this excuse to imbibe alcohol.  

More to the point, in 13 years of competition the Devin Charmers, for all their liberalization of the rules, have never come close to Tom Shufflebotham’s magic number. And the Devon group has even been accused of supporting the International Worm Liberation Front, a member of which handcuffed the chief Wallaston Primary School organizer for a time. But I suspect these “rebels” are more interested in charming their fellow humans  then in saving the charmed worms.

I suspect that before the arrival of the Worm Charming Championship in 1980,  the most important event to have occurred in the neighborhood of the Wallaston Primary School was the Great Fire of Nantwich in 1583, or perhaps the Battle of Nantwich during the English Civil War. But compared to these minor disruptions, the annual fundraiser for the 1,377 young students beside the A509 is best described as earth shaking, certainly for the worms.

The most worms ever charmed within the 30 minute time limit, were brought to the surface by 10 year old Sophie Smith, on 27 June, 2009. But global warming had an impact on the 2019 winner, who was James Martin, who was only able to pull 11 wigglies out of the parched soil. 

Like so much else in the world of 2020, the 41st charming was a virtual event, held on Saturday 27 June, and held in the participant's own back yards, and the winners were "The Wizarding Wormers', Emma and Olivia Brookshaw, whose backyard plot produced an impressive 155 worms. 

I think it safe to assume they are going to do this again in 2021, sometime in June -  the date is not yet set. But if you can, you should attend.  Of all the stupid things you will do in your life, this one you will probably not regret.

Gates opened at one, (admission is one pound), and you could claim a charming plot by paying five pounds. But the assignment of the plots is made by a random drawing. Charming begins promptly at two, and the official count begins at 2:30. The Trophy, :”…in the shape of a golden rampant worm”, will be awarded at four.  In 2011 the most worms charmed was 256, (Dave and Sam Ashman) and the heaviest (and a record setter) at 12 and 8/100ths grams was charmed by daughter Amy and father Nick Sproston. So now everyone can get started training for next year. I'll bet the worms will be ready. To enter you may contact Mike Forrester at chiefwormer@wormcharming.com. And I hope you do.

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