Typhoid Mary is a one hour documentary that accounts for the unparalleled story of Mary Mallon. In the story, Mary is the first person in North America to be identified as a carrier of typhoid fever. The film is depicted as a framework for examining the social, cultural, legal, philosophical and ethical implications of public health policy in relation to communicable disease in the course of the twentieth century. The intellectual armature in the film encompasses a powerful set of conflicts. The main conflict in the story is the clash between the public good and the civil liberties. Another conflict in the story is on the divergence between scientific facts and ethics. Through a combination of biographical drama and challenging social history, the movie summonses the audience to reflect on the major life-interrelated themes.
Some of the themes that have been explored in the film are fields of bacteriology and epidemiology, the interaction between ethnicity and public policy, the impact of scientific developments on social values and customs, how private behavior is publicly controlled and the impact of popular media on society’s feedbacks to medical and social challenges. From this, the film explores the scientific, cultural, political and social forces that influence the public healthcare policy during the late 19th and early 20th century. Through this film, the audience get an understanding of how diseases influences human life by examining the era at which the main character in the film Mary Mallon lived. In this examined, the film places a greater emphasis on the gender, ethnicity and social dynamics. The film also provides a historical illustration of the major discussion regarding the ethics of guarding the health of the public. Additionally, the film offers a general overview of the emerging history of bacteriology and the manner in which it was comprehended in America,
Through this film, the director has managed to challenge the prevailing cultural image of Typhoid Mary as a metaphor representing prototypical illness carrier. By doing this, the director has managed to put a contribution to the continuing debate regarding the factors that led to the negative treatment that Mary Mallon received during her treatment. Generally, the film received positive critics considering the interesting plot and the lessons that can be garnered from this particular film. Since its production, the film has been used as a historical literature especially when exploring factors relating to diseases and how ill people are treated in the society.
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