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To be sure, Mary Mallon was not entirely blameless when she knowingly returned to cooking in 1915, but the blame must be more broadly shared. Much of what Mallon did can be explained by events greater than herself and beyond her control.

the New York City Health Commissioner who had released her in 1910

, helped her find a job in a laundry, it did not provide the wages or job satisfaction to which she had previously become accustomed. Nor did it provide the social amenities, as limited as they were, of domestic work in the homes of New York's upper class.

Lederle's words of obligation to help her in 1910

did not provide her

long-term gainful employment.

precipitously locked Mallon up, succeed in convincing Mallon that her danger to the health of people for whom she cooked was real and lifelong. The medical arguments that carried weight among the elite at the time and have become more broadly convincing since did not resonate with her. There was no welfare system to support her. There was no viable "safety net," practical or intellectual, for an unemployed middle-aged Irish immigrant single woman.

An old file card detailing results from tests on stool specimens from Mary Mallon gives a capsule history of her capture and quarantine. Enlarge

Hard choices

Health officials chose not to deal with their first identified healthy carrier in a flexible way.

Part of the New York American article of June 20, 1909, which first identified Mary Mallon as "Typhoid Mary" Enlarge

Proper treatment

The Most Dangerous Woman in America.

Typhoid Mary, for intentionally spreading the deadly illness

In turn-of-the-century New York City, typhoid was a growing problem. The Department of Health had a lot on its plate; in addition to typhoid, it was trying to quell out­breaks of smallpox, tuberculosis, diphtheria and whooping cough that were sweeping through the area [source: NOVA]. Luckily,

scientists had developed a sophisticated understanding of microbial diseases and how they spread -- even if everyone in the lay public didn't quite

rasp all of it yet.The Department of Health knew what caused typhoid, but dealin

g with the spread of the disease was another question altogether. It's a question that plagues us to this day. It's no longer considered humane to simply cast contagious disease victims out of society and into the wilderness to fend for themselves. What exactly to do with them remains controversial. Authorities must walk the line between keeping their societies safe from debilitating illness and infringing on the victims' personal rights. This controversy reached a fever pitch in early 20th-century New York when it came to one individual.It might surprise you to learn that this fervor revolved around someone who was actually immune to typhoid. Though it's uncommon, some people are naturally immune to the illness, meaning they can carry the parasite and never suffer from a single symptom. Nevertheless, these people can just as easily spread the disease to others. This was the case for one Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time as well as in the worst possible occupation for a carrier of typhoid: She was a cook.

Painful diarrhea, high fever, nasty red rashes and sleeplessness typically characterize the illness. Left untreated, typhoid can result in death.