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National Immunization Awareness Month: Typhoid Fever & The Vaccine

Image Courtesy of News-Medical

By the time that Karl Joseph Eberth published his discoveries and defined the disease in 1880, Typhoid Fever, or Salmonella Typhi had already claimed enough lives to become a certain focus for researchers. But it’s not the symptomatic pathology of the disease that’s so shocking, but how it spread in some places to become an epidemic.

Typhoid Fever is a highly contagious bacterial infection characterized by intensified symptoms of those typically associated with the flu, including but not limited to headaches, high fever, bodily discomfort, and digestive issues. If left untreated, the disease may subside in as little as two weeks. However, by the turn of the 20th century, approximately twenty percent of all cases resulted in death or greater complications. Whilst the mortality rate alone is high, the rate of contraction was, especially for the time, extremely high. This can be attributed to the disease’s pathway through the digestive system, making contamination by mediums such as water and fecal matter effortless coupled with a lack of hygiene and understanding of personal wellness practices for the day.

Many may know the story of Typhoid Mary better than the disease that gave her such a name as that. Mary Mallon, as she was known in her personal life, came to America around the same time typhoid was infecting greater populations and set up a new home in New York. Mary was a carrier of Typhoid Fever, yet a-symptomatic; she was also a cook to multiple families in the area. Such a combination made wherever she traveled a breeding ground for the disease.

Situated in the East River, home to abandoned facilities and crumbling infrastructure, North Brother Island has a history of disease and warehousing the sick. Since the mid 19th century, River Hospital sat on North Brother Island and would see the likes of Typhoid Fever, Smallpox, and Tuberculosis, amongst other illnesses. The strategic placement of the hospital was to prevent the spread of highly contagious and deadly diseases for the time.

Mary’s infection of dozens, leaving some dead, made her a poster child for the disease and labeled her a menace to society. She was to be confined to North Brother Island in 1915 where she would remain until her death in 1938. The legacy of Typhoid Fever would not die with Mary.

Before Mary became a headline, Almroth Edward Wright developed the first Typhoid Vaccine which would be used primarily for the military at first. The vaccine and treatments would go on to see revisions and improvements with the advancement of medical technology. Despite this and it’s general absence in western societies, much of the world still fights the effects of the disease where treatment is scarce or inaccessible. In the United States today, Salmonella Typhi is such a rarity, citizens are discouraged from receiving the vaccine unless knowingly traveling to or entering a community at risk of Typhoid contraction. The two forms of inoculation for this disease are oral and through injection. Both still require boosters and will not remain permanently effective in preventing Typhoid Fever. 

If you would like to learn more about the typhoid fever vaccine, our information was sourced from Britannica.com, News-Medical, Healthline and Wikipedia.