by 
Anonymous
ANSWERS: 2
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She was famously a carrier of the disease typhoid fever -- caused by a type of Salmonella bacteria -- which she spread by cooking food for public consumption in the New York area around the turn of the century 100 years ago. For some reason Mary herself did not suffer from the disease, but even after health experts of the time tracked her down, confronted her, and insisted that she never work as a food preparer, she defied their orders (not believing them) and continued to work as a cook -- eventually becoming incarcerated / exiled in quarantine. My information comes from what I remember from a tv documentary -- sorry no links.
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"Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 – November 11, 1938), also known as Typhoid Mary, was the first person in the United States to be identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. Over the course of her career as a cook, she infected 47 people, three of whom died from the disease. Her notoriety is in part due to her vehement denial of her own role in spreading the disease, together with her refusal to cease working as a cook. She was forcibly quarantined twice by public health authorities and died in quarantine. It was also possible that she was born with the disease, as her mother had typhoid fever during her pregnancy." "Today, Typhoid Mary is a generic term for a carrier of a dangerous disease who is a danger to the public because they refuse to take appropriate precautions." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon She was no more allowed out of quarantine from 1915 until her death in 1938.
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