PBS program to feature UW medical historian

Judith Leavitt, a UW Medical School historian, and other national experts on the history of Mary Mallon – also known as Typhoid Mary – will be featured in a program to air on NOVA, the acclaimed television science series on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

“The Most Dangerous Woman in America,” a dramatization of the story of Typhoid Mary, is scheduled to air Tuesday, Oct. 12, at 7 p.m., on Wisconsin Public Television.

Leavitt researched the early 1900s story of Mallon and chronicled her life, its complex circumstances and implications for today in the 1996 book “Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health.” At the heart of the story is the fact that New York City health officials isolated Mallon for life – against her will and without due legal process – because she unintentionally transmitted typhoid fever when she cooked for other people. Leavitt and other historians believe that stigmas and stereotypes of the day worked against Mallon and contributed to the extreme treatment she received.

Mallon’s story “strongly depicts major ethical dilemmas surrounding protecting individual liberty and the public’s health that are still relevant today,” says Leavitt, who is the Ruth Bleier WARF Professor of Medical History, the UW Foundation Chair Rupple Bascom Professor and professor of the history of science and women’s studies at UW–Madison.

PBS also is hosting a Web site about Typhoid Mary at http://www.pbs.org/nova/typhoid/. The site includes a letter written by Mallon to the New York Supreme Court; historical interpretations by Leavitt, with current-day appeal; information about the history of quarantine from the 1300s to today; an interactive feature for Web visitors to investigate an illness outbreak; and related links.