Patricia Holden MD|

I mentioned something about how some diseases can be spread from one person to another and that how it can cause people to isolate themselves from others. Most diseases have symptoms that can be easily seen so it can be pretty easy for people to distinguish who is infected and who isn’t. However, what if that person is someone who seems to be disease-free but somehow could contract the disease to anyone near him or her? Scary isn’t it? Here are three examples of carriers.

Milkman in Boston - Around 1899, a typhoid outbreak happened in Jamaica Plain, Boston Massachussets. Apparently, it was a milkman who was infected by the disease a month back but continued his duties without realizing that he himself was infected. The bad thing was, being a milkman, wherever he goes to deliver the product, he was unknowingly spreading the disease. The man has 300 customers so imagine how many he could have infected. Note: Picture above is not of the milkman I’m referring to but is simply there to give you an idea of what a milkman is (if you don’t happen to know…haha).

Mary Mallon - Better known as “Typhoid Mary”. She was the first person in the US to be known as a “healthy carrier” of typhoid fever. As a cook, she infected 47 people with 3 of them dying due to the disease. After being approached by typhoid researcher George Soper, she denied that she was a carrier of the disease and refused to quit her job as a cook. This continued on until public health authorities arrived and took her into custody. She was examined and was proven to be a carrier. She was isolated for three years then released under the condition that she would not take a job that was related to food. She still did, under the alias “Mary Brown”, where she infected 25 more people. She was quarantined for life after that. She died at 69 years of age due to pneumonia. During her autopsy, it was found she was carrying live typhoid bacteria in her gallbladder.

Princess Alice - The third child of Queen Victoria of Britain and was a carrier of X-linked hemophilia gene. She passed hemophilia to the German and Russian imperial families. She’s considered to be a genetic carrier, meaning that she inherited a genetic trait yet does not show its trait. Of her six children, three showed symptoms of the disease. Her daughter Irene was also a carrier and after marrying her first cousin, Prince Henry of Prussia, she gave birth to two hemophilic sons. Every attempt was made to conceal the fact that the disease had been presented in the German imperial family, but Waldemar, the youngest of the princes, bled to death at age 4. The other prince, Henry, died at the age of fifty-six.

Those mentioned above are only human carriers. Animals and insects can be carriers as well. They don’t necessarily show any signs of the disease but if the disease-causing organism happens to rub onto you, it’s possible for you to get infected. There’s nothing much that can be done about it unless you have psychic powers to know who’s infected or not. Or live in isolation in your private island. Or an escape to the mountains or the beach. Speaking of beach escape, LL is having a contest so check it out.