Polite Dissent

X-Men #194 “Primary Infection, part 1 of 3”
Mike Carey, script
Humberto Ramos, pencils

The X-Men have captured the flunkie of a mysterious scientist and Rogue uses her powers to access his memory:

Dr. Palance: You’ve heard of Mary Mallon, I assume?
Flunkie: N-No. I don’t believe –
Dr. Palance: The original Typhoid Mary. She was a healthy carrier of the S. typhi virus. She gave typhoid to everyone she touched.

Sorry Dr. Palance. You may be a brilliant geneticist, but as an epidemiologist you leave a great deal to be desired. You have committed one of the most common comic book medical errors: confused a virus with a bacteria.

The bacteria Salmonella typhi (at least Dr. Palance got the name right), a member of the Salmonella family, is the cause of typhoid fever. This disease is rare in the United States and most industrialized nations, but is common in the developing world. It is spread by contaminated food or water. Initial symptoms include diarrhea, fever, malaise and abdominal pain. As the infection worsens, the fever becomes higher and the diarrhea becomes worse. Eventually, weakness, fatigue, delirium, and death occur. Luckily, S. typhi is sensitive to several common antibiotics, though resistant strains are becoming more common.

Typhoid Mary was a real person, but Dr. Palance is overstating her contagiousness. She was a carrier of the S. typhi bacteria, but never became infected with typhoid fever herself. In her work as a cook in the late-nineteenth and and early-twentieth centuries, she infected nearly fifty people with typhoid, three of whom eventually died of the disease. When she was discovered to be a source of the disease, she was placed in quarantine. After three years, she was released with the condition that she stop working as a cook. However, she took an assumed name and started cooking again, infecting more people in the process. This time, she was placed in quarantine for the rest of her life.

• Wikipedia entry on Mary Mallon, the “original” Typhoid Mary
• The comic book Typhoid Mary
• Medline and Military information on Typhoid Fever
• Snopes.com Urban Legends Reference on the legend of Typhoid Mary
• A very nice website on Typhoid Mary from the PBS show Nova (from the episode “The Most Dangerous Woman in America”)