Living in Denial
Soper was taken aback by what he found. Seven of the eight families that Mary had worked for as a cook had come down with typhoid fever. He thought that this was enough evidence to convince Mary to hand over some samples. But when the investigator confronted Mary again, she refused to cooperate.
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She told him that the outbreaks had come from contaminated food and water, and not from a person who didn’t have any symptoms. At the time, the concept of healthy carriers was completely unknown, even to health care workers. Soper contacted the New York City Health Department to tell them about his hunch: Mary Mellon was somehow spreading typhoid fever all around the city. As it turns out, Soper was right.