Fatal Fever: Tracking Down Typhoid Mary

Fatal Fever is a book by Gail Jarrow about Typhoid and how it affected society. This story is also about typhoid Mary and the medical discovery of  the asymptomatic spread of diseases. When Mary Mallon, a cook, starts appearing as a common factor in the web that is typhoid, will George Soper, a talented specialist, be able to put the pieces together? Or will all of society come crumbling down.

Basically, this book is about the struggles typhoid caused and what typhoid is. There are many causes and effects in this book, all of which are very important for the progress of the storyline. One of the main cause – effects I found in the book is that when typhoid started to spread, many cities got shut down, schools got canceled, and many died. This is important for the main idea because it shows that typhoid spread and caused society to panic. Another cause – effect I found is when Mary Mallon had typhoid, she spread it unknowingly and killed many. On the other hand, when she had typhoid, George Soper and Sara Josephine Baker had a chance to prove themselves in the medical field.

This next image shows one of the main ideas I found in this book: Typhoid fever spreads rapidly and kills many. Some evidence I found in the book is on page 13, it mentions, ” Under the right conditions, it can survive several weeks in water and soil.” To elaborate,  we can the virus can live without a host long enough to find one and continue spreading. This is harmful because that means the virus is even more widely spread. Another thing to mention is that the virus was fatal for 10 to 30 percent of its victims (information found on page 16) I think that this is a main idea because it pops up during the book several times and there is so much evidence supporting this claim.

     Here is an image of some of my chapter notes from this book. This is chapter 3 to chapter 7. In the beginning of the book, you can see that it mainly talks about what typhoid is. Once that image is put into your head, the author explains the story about typhoid Mary and how she spread the virus unknowingly.

     This is a page in my notebook where I tracked complexity. In this page, I found a main idea from the book and found evidence to support it. All the branches symbolize evidence surrounding the main idea.

     This final page is the first page of notes I took in this class. In class, we mainly talked about main ideas and how to find them. We also learned that there are usually multiple in each story, so keep your eyes out for them.

     All in all, I think this is a great book if you are looking for a quick read to broaden your horizons. Not very action packed until later, so be willing to be bored the first 30 minutes of your read. This book really goes in detail about typhoid and I enjoyed it because it really relates to modern day.