WorksheetsPatient Zero Ch. 4: Analysis & Text Evidence
Total questions: 14
Worksheet time: 28mins
According to the text, why was Charles Warren 'outraged' by the typhoid diagnosis in his fashionable Long Island home in 1906?
He had specifically hired Mary Mallon to prevent such an outbreak from happening.
He knew the contaminated clams they had eaten were purchased from his neighbor.
Typhoid was widely considered a disease of the poor, reflecting poorly on his family's hygiene and social standing.
He believed his insurance would not cover a tropical disease like typhoid.
Which evidence from the text best supports your answer?
Typhoid was a disease of the poor. It meant you didn't have proper standards of hygiene in your home.
Thompson was worried... His luxury summer house might get a bad reputation, and then how would he rent it out next year?
Charles Warren demanded an explanation from the owner of the summer house.
This mystery needed to be cleared up, quickly and discreetly.
The chapter highlights that when epidemics strike, people often look for someone to blame. Which two groups were frequently blamed for disease outbreaks in New York, and which group did Mary Mallon belong to, seemingly confirming this bias?
Immigrants and people of low income; she was an Irish immigrant.
Landlords and the city government; she was a woman.
Doctors and nurses; she was a cook.
Public health officials and investigators; she was an asymptomatic carrier.
Which evidence from the text best supports your answer?
It raises questions about how far governments should go when trying to protect the public from epidemics.
She wasn't afraid to chase officials away, elude doctors, fight the police, swear, argue and write angry letters...
Mary was a woman, a servant, an Irish immigrant to the United States, unmarried, and with little education.
...Her behavior may have brander her as a problem case in their eyes.
The text describes Mary Mallon's treatment by the Health Department after her release from the FIRST quarantine. What factors contributed to the Health Department's failure to provide her with a stable, non-cooking job?
They could not force employers to hire a known typhoid carrier for a different profession.
They did not see it as their responsibility to train Mary for new work, since she was a servant and immigrant with little power.
They saw her as a villain and deliberately chose a punishing, low-wage job for her.
Mary herself refused all offers of retraining, insisting on returning to cooking.
Which evidence from the text best supports your answer?
Health department officials admitted that perhaps they had overreacted.
In 1910, after three years as a prisoner of the New York City Health Department, she was allowed to cross the river back to New York City.
The health department didn't see it as their responsibility to train Mary for new work... they gave her a job as a laundress.
At first, they checked in with her frequently- then, as the weeks and months passed, less and less regularly.
Before the case of Mary Mallon, what relatively new idea about disease transmission, proposed by the German bacteriologist Dr. Robert Koch, was George Soper attempting to prove?
That surgical instruments needed to be sterilized before operations.
That healthy people could transmit disease without showing any symptoms themselves, known as asymptomatic carriers.
That typhoid bacteria could mutate into drug-resistant strands.
That contaminated milk was the primary source of all typhoid epidemics.
What evidence from the text best supports your answer?
A German bacteriologist, Dr. Robert Koch, had recently published a scientific paper about a healthy carrier of typhoid.
When the doctor examined her, he found to his surprise that her feces, urine, and blood were still full of active typhoid bacteria.
The carrier was a woman who had come down with typhoid years before and made a full recovery.
In 1906, a few doctors and epidemiologist where beginning to suspect that, in some cases, healthy people could transmit disease... "asymptomatic carriers."
Which scientific development, described in the chapter, required George Soper request blood, urine, and feces samples from Mary Mallon?
The new techniques of bacteriology, which allowed for the cultivation and identification of bacteria in human body fluids using a microscope.
The invention of the world's first X-ray machine, allowing doctors to see the bacteria in her gut.
The discovery of antibiotics, which could be used to test the resistance of the typhoid bacteria in her samples.
The use of colored dye in the plumbing to check for water contamination.
What piece of text evidence best supports your answer?
The idea that a doctor could diagnose a disease by looking at a tiny blood sample under a microscope sounded ridiculous.
Thirty years earlier, the bacteria that causes typhoid, salmonella typhi, had been identified.
George could prove that she was the source of the Oyster Bay outbreak.
Because Mary had never shown symptoms of typhoid, the new techniques of bateriology were the only way that George could prove that she was the source of the outbreak.
What critical scientific knowledge did Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis LACK in 1847 that prevented his colleagues from accepting his effective handwashing practice, leading to him being 'run him out of the profession'?
The ability to develop a vaccine to prevent puerperal fever.
The data showing that surgical instruments were the primary cause of puerperal fever.
Proof that bleach was a more effective disinfectant than carbolic acid.
The understanding that microscopic organisms cause disease, which Louis Pasteur proved 20 years later.
Which evidence from the text best supports your answer?
When they did, rates of puerperal fever at the hospital dropped to less than 2 percent.
Twenty years later, Louis Pasteur proved that microscopic organisms cause disease, and suddenly Semmelweis's insistence on handwashing began to seem more reasonable.
...doctors were passing infection from woman to woman, and he asked them to try washing their hands in water and bleach before each delivery.
He was forced to leave Vienna, and he had difficulty finding work as a doctor ever again.
At the very end of the chapter, the author discusses typhoid in the modern world. What development in typhoid has created a terrifying new reality, making the disease harder to treat and more deadly?
Weather changes are causing an increase in contaminated water sources globally.
The bacteria mutating, creating new strands of typhoid that are resistant to antibiotics (a superbug).
A sudden increase in the number of healthy carriers due to new food processing techniques.
The mutation of the bacteria to spread through the air instead of the fecal-oral route.
What evidence from the text best supports your answer?
The World Health Organization estimates that between 11 and 21 million people get sick with typhoid every year, and up to 161,000 of them... die.
There are vaccines that can prevent typhoid, but in countries where typhoid is most common, the cost of introducing a vaccination program is too high.
...an outbreak of drug-resistant typhoid emerged in Pakistan, and by 2019 it had infected 11,000 people...
...the bacteria that causes typhoid is mutating, producing new strains of typhoid that are resistant to antibiotics: a "superbug."
