Relentless The Search For Typhoid Mary Ms. Joan E. Meijer 9781931191296 Books
Download As PDF : Relentless The Search For Typhoid Mary Ms. Joan E. Meijer 9781931191296 Books
One of the Greatest Medical Mysteries of All Time "Relentless The Search For Typhoid Mary" details the search for, the torment and the persecution of Mary Mallon - Typhoid Mary. It is the first book that gives her a voice and humanity. It shows why - of all the typhoid carriers in New York at the time - and there were hundreds - she alone was locked up for years in solitary confinement. It is a story as relevant today as it was in 1906. It deals with issues that fill today's nightly news; public health, immigration, class and economic warfare, the war on women, prejudice, injustice and the plight of minorities. What Readers Say • "I had trouble putting this book down. It presents the tale in the style of good historical fiction, though it is clearly based on fact, and it is an engaging read." – Jennifer Davis • "This was one of the most exciting historical novels I've read in a long time… It reads very much like a mystery detective novel, with the clues and chase driving the plot." – Tienne McKenzie A story about the ground breaking investigation into the cause of typhoid - an epidemic killer of hundreds of thousands. In 1906, Dr. George Soper, of the New York Department of Health, was hired to investigate a single typhoid outbreak in Oyster Bay, New York. This investigation led him to identifying the cause of all the typhoid epidemics that had plagued the world throughout history. His investigation was thrilling and masterful. The key was the Irish cook, Mary Mallon; Typhoid Mary. Working with her employment agency, Soper discovered that she had left a trail of typhoid dating back six years. Typhoid Mary is still known as a medical villain, but is she? Or, is she a courageous, hard working, responsible person who had the misfortune of being an unattractive, unmarried woman and Irish immigrant at a time when, "Irish Need Not Apply" could be seen on signs advertising housing and jobs throughout the City? Was she persecuted for fighting for her rights? Or, was she simply a victim of New York's rich and powerful? If you like books like "The Hot Zone" pick up a copy today.
Relentless The Search For Typhoid Mary Ms. Joan E. Meijer 9781931191296 Books
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Relentless The Search For Typhoid Mary Ms. Joan E. Meijer 9781931191296 Books Reviews
Joan Meijer has published a great deal. Nevertheless, at the beginning of Relentless The Search for Typhoid Mary, her prose style seemed stilted and uncertain. It was not until she got to Mary Mallon's first hostile encounter with the police that Meijer loosened up, got her footing, and wrote like the accomplished professional I take her to be. That's when Relentless became a page turner.
A novelist's account of the best known and most thoroughly defamed, demeaned, and degraded of hundreds -- perhaps thousands! -- of asymptomatic typhoid carriers, Relentless is very different from a conventional medical "who done it." This is not the sort of novel that focuses exclusively on identification and capture of one reckless malefactor, seeking to bring him or her to some sort of accounting. Instead, the author brings Mary Mallon to life as a woman of her time and place who is a great deal more than an unwitting carrier of the typhus bacillus. Meijer also does a creditable job of character development in portraying Mary's jovial and good natured boy friend, Hal; Mary's nemesis, the obsessively professional and flinty sanitary engineer, Dr. Soper; and the capable and sympathetic Dr. Baker, an insightful and plainspoken forerunner of a realistic but committed feminist of our time.
As the novel's unfortunate protagonist, Mary Mallon is presented as a decent and caring woman who fled Ireland's deadly potato famine and came to New York City alone, unemployed, and homeless. She began by taking the most menial jobs while living in Nineteenth Century urban squalor. When she recognized that cooking was one of the few relatively lucrative occupations open to impoverished female immigrants, Mary started from the bottom, taking kitchen work of all kinds, until her keen powers of observation and natural aptitude enabled her to function as a highly valued cook even in the homes of the wealthy and powerful. The author might have given a bit more attention to the process whereby Mary developed her cooking into something resembling an art form, and how she first came to be taken seriously by prospective upper class employers, but these are not serious omissions.
More confusing, however, is how the repeated pattern of accepting employment as a cook, followed by an outbreak of typhoid fever among her employers and their families permitted Mary to continue to resist the claim made by experts that she was a carrier. Perhaps the experts' judgments were rendered implausible because Mary selflessly and effectively struggled to enable almost all of the ill to recover. She may have asked herself how she could be both one who spreads the disease and one who rescues adults and children from its ravages. On the face of it, these activities certainly seem contradictory, and perhaps Mary may be excused for denying that which seemed so obvious to ostensibly objective, scientifically trained observers. Furthermore, Mary had little familiarity with and did not subscribe to the germ theory of disease. Her story, moreover is set more than one hundred years ago, and Mary had received little or no formal education.
In fact, one of the illuminating themes that runs through Relentless is the set of relationships that tied together ethnicity, class, and gender during the time and at the place in which Mary's story unfolds. It takes very little imagination to understand why Mary would be suspicious of putative experts and other people of rank and privilege. Mary was certainly correct in concluding that the well-born and well-educated knew nothing of the lives of people such as her. Nor did she have reason to believe that they had her best interests in mind. Mary was no fool.
I think the author did an excellent job of enabling the reader to appreciate the irony in juxtaposing Mary's strength, intelligence, devotion to work, and concern for others with the malady that she unknowingly, and contrary to her innate decency, inflicted on others, people to whom she meant no harm. Similarly, the contrast between the treatment of men with this unfortunate trait and Mary is really quite striking, inviting the reader to question the priorities of the authorities.
After a beginning that I found a bit shaky, Relentless turns into a fascinating story with well-developed characters, some of them engaging and some pretty despicable. The relationship between Mary and Hal does not fill many pages, but I found it a source of joy in a world of filth, derogation, and pain. Irish immigrants such as Mary were exploited and victimized in an unkind world, but in some touching instances they were able to find comfort in each other. The story of Mary Mallon is a good one, and Joan Meijer tells it well.
GreAt!
I bought this thinking it was a biography or history. Instead, it's a novel. As such, it's not bad, but not what I was expecting. If you want straight history, this is not your best choice. But if you want a novelized version of what Mary went through, it's not bad. I didn't love it, but that may simply have been that I was expecting something different.
This was one of the most exciting historical novels I've read in a long time. The author does a wonderful job of bringing the persons of Mary Mallon and George Soper to life. It reads very much like a mystery detective novel, with the clues and chase driving the plot. However, it is the character of Mary that is at the center of the story her hopes and dreams, her struggle to build a life for herself once her status as a typhoid carrier becomes apparent, and the suffering she endures as a result of her "isolation," which is more accurately an incarceration at a sanatorium on North Brother Island. The only reason I gave this four instead of five stars was for the terrible editing. There are sentence fragments, missing words, run-ons, and other mistakes that drew me out of the story at many points along the way. I read it on my , and hope that the errors are limited to that format.
This book is an exciting and compelling look at the case of "Typhoid Mary" and the health system in America in the 1900s. It draws the reader in with rich details about the food, clothes, and lives of people at the time. The story follows Dr Soper and Dr Josephine Baker as they race to find the causes behind fatal outbreaks of typhoid in New York City. I had trouble putting this book down. It presents the tale in the style of good historical fiction, though it is clearly based on fact, and it is an engaging read. If you like books like "The Hot Zone", you will enjoy this.
Though this book loosely follows the true tale of Mary Mallon, the author has taken great creative license. Not in a good way. As one reviewer pointed out, I doubt there is documentation that Mary lauded the invention of Vaseline as it made anal sex more enjoyable. Mary's story is interesting enough without dressing it up in such gaudy and sensationalist fodder. If you want an interesting and accurate account of Mary Mallon's infamous tale, pick up "Typhoid Mary An Urban Historical" by Anthony Bourdain. Or really, ANY other book on the topic. I'm giving two stars only because I take responsibility for not reading these reviews before making my purchase.
The story of Typhoid Mary is generally known. Ms. Meijer makes Mary come alive as a human being who was persecuted, prosecuted & abandoned simply because she was a woman. Yes, she was a carrier of Typhoid, but there were many others at that time, all men, none of whom were treated nearly as harshly as Mary Mallon. This novel based on the facts is one of the hardest to put done of any historical novel I've ever read. I highly recommend it.
This book was not what I expected at all. I randomly chose this book to learn more about the life of Typhoid Mary and the epidemic in America. Unfortunately, this book turned out to be a highly dramatized historical fiction that took quite a few liberties with Mary's life (how on earth would Meijer know that Mary enjoyed anal sex once Vaseline was invented?). Meijer didn't bring in the complexities of that time period for a working woman, cultural stereotypes, or concepts of hygiene. I actually enjoyed the afterword that provided an actual historical account of Mary more than the fictional version. I think `loosely' based on the true story is a more accurate title.
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