In the United States, an estimated 5,700 cases of typhoid fever occur annually, mostly among travelers. An estimated 21 million cases of typhoid fever and 200,000 deaths occur worldwide.

redit: Courtesy of Ed and Bubbles Yadow

Mallon was not a free agent in 1914, when she returned to cooking. Consider her circumstances. She had been abruptly, even violently, wrenched from her life, a life in which she found various satisfactions and from which she earned a decent living. She was physically separated from all that was familiar to her and isolated on an island. She was labeled a monster and a freak. [For more on the quarantine of Mary Mallon, aka "Typhoid Mary," see In Her Own Words.]