March 1907- Mary Mallon answered the door of her house. On the other side of the door were men dressed in suits. Then, all of a sudden, Mary lunged at them with a fork

June 1910- Scientists figured out that cooking kills typhoid germs. They also found out that there are some foods that you can eat in order to avoid Typhoid germs

February 1911- Dr. George Soper began working on the case of Typhoid fever. He worked as an engineer and enrolled at Columbia University. He was the perfect person for the job!

January 11, 1903- In Ithaca, New York, a feverish Ithacan broke out. It needed a doctor's help. In days, people fell to their beds, being too weak to move. More than 100 people a day were rushed to the city hospital. As symptoms grew larger, it was shown that it immediately needed medical treatment.

1897- An anonymous cook was cooking at a restaurant. He purposely let his coworkers try his food, but he did not wash the food properly. He did this so that they would get so sick to a point where they would die, and he could get paid more.

1906- Dr. George Soper lost the chef's trail yet was eager to find it. He lost the trail for nearly 9 years until 1906. When he ended up in Oyster Bay with the Warrens.

1912- they found a tumor in Mary Mallon's brain, and her son passed away

1936- Scientists found a cure for typhoid fever

1937- Dr. George Soper had died.

What is Typhoid fever about?

Typhoid is a bacterial infection that is caused by Salmonella Typhi. The symptoms vary depending on the severity of the case but usually starts six to thirty days after you are exposed to it. Without getting any sort of treatment, the symptoms could last weeks and even months.

Why is this important?

People need to see what happens when there wasn’t much medicine around and what happened when somebody got sick, or when there was an outbreak because medicine is way different now than it was 70 years ago. Medicine is ALWAYS changing and so are the diseases. Doctors and scientists are curing old diseases and discovering new ones all of the time and it’s important for the world to come to the realization that medicine is different every day.

Where and when did this outbreak happen?

The outbreak happened in March of 1907 in Mary Mallon’s house.

How does this subject and knowledge NOT apply to our world today?

It doesn’t really apply to the U.S today because there is a vaccine called Vivotif that prevents people from getting this terrible disease. There are also more rules in the food industry to out rule this problem to ever really happen. With all of this, there is also a very low percentage that anyone in the United States will ever get Typhoid fever and there is little to no chance that there will be an outbreak of Typhus ever again.

There are actually still cases of Typhoid disease to this day. In fact John's Hopkins has new evidence of it.

On October 4, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LAC DPH) announced it was investigating an outbreak involving 9 cases of flea-borne typhus in downtown Los Angeles. On October 12, LAC DPH identified an additional cluster involving 4 cases of flea-borne typhus in the city of Compton. Of note, 6 of the 9 cases confirmed in downtown Los Angeles occurred in persons experiencing homelessness.

Flea-borne typhus is endemic in Los Angeles County, which means that cases occur annually. However, according to LAC DPH, “in recent years the average number of reported cases has doubled to nearly 60 cases per year.” The county has experienced 63 cases of typhus so far in 2018. The Los Angeles Times reports that there have been 20 cases of typhus this year in Pasadena alone, which usually experiences only five cases annually.

The current outbreak has prompted local officials, including Mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti, to form a task force aimed at containing the spread of infection. Below, we explore possible reasons why typhus, a group of diseases which is typically associated with overcrowding and poor hygiene, appears to be making such a comeback in Los Angeles County.