typhoid fever. We have found what we now call 'typhoid
carriers'--persons who do not have the disease themselves,
perhaps never have had it, but who are literally living
test-tubes of the typhoid bacillus. It is positively uncanny.
Everywhere they go they scatter the disease. Down at the
department we have the records of a number of such instances, and
our men in the research laboratories have come to the conclusion
that, far from being of rare occurrence, these cases are
comparatively common. I have in mind one particular case of a
servant girl, who, during the past five or six years, has been
employed in several families.

"In every family typhoid fever has later broken out. Experts have
traced out at least thirty, cases and several deaths due to this
one person. In another case we found an epidemic up in Harlem to
be due to a typhoid carrier on a remote farm in Connecticut. This
carrier, innocently enough, it is true, contaminated the
milk-supply coming from that farm. The result was over fifty
cases of typhoid here in this city.

"However, to return to the case of the servant I have mentioned.
Last spring we had her under surveillance, but as there was no
law by which we could restrain her permanently she is still at
large. I think one of the Sunday papers at the time had an
account of her--they called her 'Typhoid Bridget,' and in red
ink she was drawn across the page in gruesome fashion, frying the
skulls of her victims in a frying-pan over a roaring fire. That
particular typhoid carrier, I understand--"

"Excuse me, Commissioner, if I interrupt, but I think we have