Behind the Scenes Minis: Mary, Beulah, Baby Alive

0:01 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And I'm Holly Frey. This week on the show, we took another look at Mary Mallon, which was a much shorter episode very long ago in the past on the show. In particular, I was trying to figure out what to talk about next. And I was having a hard time.

0:31 I know you do this also, Holly. Sometimes I will look at and discard just a series of topics. Yeah. Because they are too similar to something we just did, or I don't have the resources right now, or I'm just not feeling interested in that topic. And my... My mind went on a little digression about what it must have been like for the earlier hosts of the show who did not have thousands of episodes in the back catalog already done. And then I went, wait a minute.

1:09 We talked about revisiting some of those very, very long ago episodes. Let me go have a look. So I immediately said, okay, typhoid Mary seems very relevant to right now for a number of reasons. Yeah. Right. I mean, among them being the ongoing food safety situation we're having in the United States with different produce having parasite problems.

1:37 And then also the weird collective revisiting of The early years of COVID and people freaking out and acting like we were all ordered into our homes at gunpoint, which is not what happened. Correct. Oh, I'm irate about some of that. Yeah, me too. Me too. I will say that I didn't fully understand some of the discussion around Mary Mallon and how she did return to cooking. how it seems like she may not have fully understood or believed what it meant to be a typhoid carrier. But then I lived through the early years of the COVID pandemic and also now. Where people will just steadfastly believe things that are demonstrably false. And I was like, okay.

2:34 I get it. I don't like it, but I get it now. Yeah. I had a weird realization while working on this. I went down a very long rabbit hole looking for something that had been printed in the New York Medical Journal. And what I was looking at was the New York State Journal of Medicine. And I had just thought that the New York Medical Journal was what people were colloquially calling that one. Nope. They are two different things. So I had been trying to find this particular article online. I was looking at scans of medical journals, and I was like, I don't understand. This is saying that it's on page 610, but all of these scans are ending on page 520-something. Why? And at first, I thought maybe everyone was working from the same scan, like

3:24 the same scan of a big volume of journals that had been uploaded, and it just was missing the final issue or something. And then I went, wait, it's me. I am looking in the literal wrong place. I've been there. I've been there. No judgment at all. Yeah. Random side note, I was vaccinated for typhoid before we went to Morocco.

3:49 Because Morocco, compared to other places, not a big risk for typhoid at this point. But it is still a recommended vaccine for travelers going to essentially anywhere in Africa, I think. The whole continent. So that was just a random curious aside. I have a couple years of protection of typhoid. The outbreak at the maternity hospital, which is obviously unfortunate. It's unfortunate that that happened. It is unfortunate that Mary Mallon seems to have been in a situation where she was like, I have to earn a living.

4:28 I don't know what you want me to do. That led to questions about vaccine efficacy. because the typhoid vaccine had been created by that point, a significant number of people on staff at the hospital were vaccinated. So I read a whole paper that looked at the prevalence just among the staff because that was easier to isolate than like whether the patients had eaten any of the same food.

4:57 It was clearer which staff had eaten what. There were seven cases of typhoid among 44 people who had been vaccinated or 15.9%. And then six cases among 30 people who were unvaccinated, which is about 20%. So the rate was lower in vaccinated people, but not by that much. Some complicating factors were that some people had only been partially vaccinated. Some people had been vaccinated right when that vaccine first came out. So some years had passed and probably their protection had waned. It does seem like the fatality rate was a whole lot lower than it would have been if everyone was unvaccinated. And then the paper that looked at this also looked at several other typhoid outbreaks in which there were vaccinated people who were exposed.

5:55 And those other outbreaks, the results had been way more consistently the vaccine prevented. There would be zero or one vaccinated person. So I originally had this whole thing, that whole explanation in the part that was discussing the outbreak at the hospital, and I realized that the episode was getting a little long, and it wasn't directly relevant to what we were talking about. But I did find it interesting. Yeah.

6:21 I do think that the speed with which kind of public opinion turned on her... Uh-huh. was not just... that she went back to work as a cook, it was that it all went down at a maternity hospital. Yeah. Specifically. And it was also the news coverage of that became incredibly critical. Yeah. Yeah. And had been much more sympathetic to her previously before that. The fact that it was a maternity hospital in particular, obviously not good. Yeah. Yeah.

6:58 One of the people who died in that outbreak was a staff member who had only been partially vaccinated, and the other was a much older person, so they would have been at a higher risk. But still, going to work at a hospital was just a particular... That added a layer to it, for sure. And I don't know why they were calling her Typhoid Mary at the hospital. Like...

7:22 had people connected this outbreak to her? Did they just not like her? Did they think that she was not clean enough? Like, I don't know what... Did it start as a weird joke because that was a moniker that was floating around at the time? Yeah. That's kooky. Yeah, I don't know the answer. You wanted to talk about gallbladders.

7:44 I do. Before that, I'm going to talk about something else just that is funny, which is that you had told me you were working on this episode. And then like a few days ago, out of nowhere, my beloved was watching some video that had come across social media that was talking about specifically the peach ice cream dessert. Oh, yeah.

8:05 And he was like, is this real? Is this real information? And I was like, yeah, dude. Yep. Yep. It was just very funny. I was like, I get you, universe. I know we're talking about it. It's coming. It's fine. Gallbladders. Yes. Here is the part where I'm like, No. Obviously, like, we know taking out her gallbladder would not have helped her. But, like, in that rumor that went around, because that's all I'm willing to call it, that she had had this autopsy and that her gallbladder was full of gallstones that were just, you know, riddled with typhoid. No, because let me tell you what happens when you have gallstones. Right. Standing up is hard. Like, everything hurts so bad. I have never had a child, but I have had friends that have

9:01 given birth and had gallstones tell me they thought gallstones were worse. Right. I don't know if that's accurate, and I'm sure it differs from person to person, but it was one of the most horrific pains I have ever experienced. Yeah. Doubled over, can't, like, gasping for breath. So the idea that she was just tootling around about her life... doing her regular jobs and whatnot and nobody was like wow Mary really is like struggling she seems to be in a lot of pain like the reason we even found out that I had them was because I was having weird I mean I was having like chest pains and I had done a telemedicine thing because it was the middle of the night and the doctor was like hey I don't want to scare you but you're of a

9:43 certain age you carry some extra weight we want to make sure you're not having a heart attack please go to the ER right now yeah and when I went you know those are all the words you need to say I didn't even have my paperwork filled out and the EKG was on me I think I've said that before but it was because one of the ER nurses was like, cool, your heart's fine, but you are white knuckling that bed so hard, I think you're going to break the frame. Clearly something's wrong. I mean, that's like the level of pain. So the fact that she... per this rumor, was just tootling around with a gallbladder full of gallstones. Because you pass them. That's what happens. They don't just build up in there forever. They move through

10:19 the valve from your gallbladder into your stomach, and that's where it hurts so bad. So that's just like, anybody that has ever had a gallstone knows that that's baloney. Yeah, yeah. I do think, my limited, not in any way a doctor understanding is, The gallbladder is one of the places that the bacteria can continue to linger. But not the only place. And removing the gallbladder, like, does not deal with that issue. Like, it was a thing that they tried in the 20s that was clearly not working. And then today, people, for the most part, can get a longer course of antibiotics to, like, clear out the bacteria that in most people... a regular course of antibiotics deals with.

11:10 But yeah, the autopsy gallstone, or yeah, that just sounds made up to me. No, she didn't. Unless she was really good at hiding pain, which I... Yeah. Also, can we just talk about, here's what struck me, and this may just be my own hang-ups about such things. I don't care what setting it is that you're in. I don't care how clinical it is. I don't care how careful and kind the staff are. If you are not just incarcerated, but incarcerated and basically your job is essentially to give stool samples and urine samples all the time.

12:01 That is inherently so demeaning. Yeah, yeah. In ways that, like, I just... I could see her fighting with them about it out of the gate, being like, you want me to give you what? Yeah. Again, at a time when, like, we had different... I mean, some people still do. You know, there's just a different thinking about personal... you know, bodily functions and like how completely rude it would seem for someone to basically like come to the place you live and say, hey, I need a stool sample. Yeah. What? No. Yeah.

12:40 I understand her fury. A hundred percent. Right. I'm surprised she didn't bite anybody. I probably would have. She might have. Yeah. So there are a couple of books about this. neither of which I have fully read. I did sort of skim through Judith Walser-Levitt's Typhoid Mary, Captive to Public Health, which is a really interesting book in how it looks at this, because it's not like, it's not a biography of her. It's not a chronology of the case. It's more like each chapter looks at Typhoid Mary's story, like that mythology, and her as a person, through different lenses.

13:25 So like we're looking at Mary Mallon through the lens of public health, through the lens of gender and her class and all of that kind of stuff. So like that was really a very interesting way to explore that to me, which is something that I just sort of flipped through briefly. The other is a book that I have not read at all in any way, but it's by Anthony Bourdain. Oh, yeah. Which I, it just did not really occur to me that that was a topic that Anthony Bourdain would have taken on. And as I understand it, his approach was sort of just looking at her as a cook. And that was mostly the thing that I think attracted him to the story. And I read a couple of reviews of it, and it was sort of characterized as being one of the most humanizing accounts.

14:20 Even to the point of being sympathetic to her in contexts where people don't have a lot of sympathy. Which doesn't surprise me at all, given what I know of Anthony Bourdain. So those are a couple of books that exist, if people want more. I feel like I was so slow to come around on Anthony Bourdain. Oh, yeah. Yes.

14:42 I'm almost scared to say what I'm about to say. Don't come for me. Okay. I have always been on the struggle bus when it comes to chef culture. Oh, sure. And he kind of was in his earlier career a problematic part of that. Uh-huh. Right? That there's this idea, like, when I read Kitchen Confidential, I just remember thinking, like, this is bananas. And also, like, I did not like that sort of hyper aggressive. There's a phrase I call it that I can't say on this show. Just like super very machismo kind of like not just being a leader, but being a jerk leader. Yeah. That was part of the package of being a chef in a high end restaurant.

15:33 And I actually understand how we got there, right? Because it is high pressure, especially if you're at like a fine dining establishment. And I just like when I see that, when I've seen that on television shows, I hate it. It makes food taste like poison to me. I don't care how delicious it is. I don't like any of that stuff. And so, you know, when he sort of as he got older and and. We were seeing different sides of him, and he was doing more of his really amazing work that he did for the majority of his career, at least his career in the wider public eye. Like, I mean, I, like everybody else, just fell in love with him. So I have that Typhoid Mary book, and I have only read maybe 10 pages of it just

16:15 to think of, you know, it came at a time when I was busy and then I never cycled back to it. But now I want to read it because... Because I like him heaps. And that was part of what drew me to purchasing it when it came out was like this idea of he understands her position in a way very few people can. And he did, you know, have such a capability to sort of see people where they were at. Yeah. There was an empathy. Yeah. So that'll be the stuff you missed in a three-class book club of one. Yeah. I feel like people are going to immediately be like, what if there was a Stuff You Missed in History class book club? And I'm just going to say, I do not have time for a book club. Love the idea, don't have time for it.

17:04 What a beautiful idea. There's too much to do. Sorry I said that. I love chefs. Please don't think I don't like chefs. I just don't like that side of chef culture. Yeah. That I think is getting better all the time. But for a while when chef culture really came into the public eye via a lot of reality TV, it was not nice and it was not cool. I know many chefs who are wonderful and amazing. Please don't think I'm saying that all chefs are like that. Yeah.

17:29 But I don't like that yucky. Yeah. I want my food to be kissed into existence. I want it all to be like Ratatouille. I don't know. Yeah. Not even. There's a lot of bossy chef action in Ratatouille, too, but we can't all be Alfredo Linguini. No. We talked about Beulah Henry this week. That we did. I love the name Beulah, and I don't know why. I just do.

18:00 It's a good name. It's just one of those names I love. I just love it. I said that we would talk about flag code, and we're gonna. Oh, yeah, let's do it. I have feelings. Yeah, I mean, one of them is actually, though, kind of lovely, which is that, you know, her, we mentioned that Beulah's first invention, and we're using that word loosely, her first idea for an invention came when she was six years old because she saw a flag graze the ground as it was being taken down from the flagpole. And I will just say, according to the American Legion, like, we were always taught, probably you, I know I certainly was, as kids, like, if the flag touches the ground, you've got to burn it.

18:38 It has to be destroyed. The American Legion says not so. They're like, no, unless it is soiled or damaged, you can wash it. It's fine. Yeah. I also, when I was a child, had heard slash been told, if the flag touches the ground, you have to burn it. But then I had also heard that that was not true. What does kind of drive me up a wall is the combination of overly over-the-top patriotism combined with articles of clothing and whatnot that straightforwardly are In defiance of the flag code. Yes. I mean, I have the flag code here ready if you would like to hear it. Oh, I would love it. Section D states the flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up in folds,

19:42 but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below. should be used for covering a speaker's desk, and for covering a speaker's desk. draping the front of a platform and for decoration in general. Uh-huh. The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. You can think of a lot of businesses that are falling afoul of this one. Uh-huh. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Uh-huh. No part of the flag should

20:19 ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. We have a lot of problems. And this is kind of my thing, right? People get really wadded up about how a flag should be treated, but we've been discarding the flag code forever. I'm getting ready to work on an episode that's probably going to happen that one of the things that we're going to talk about is how it is a constitutional right not to salute the flag when you're in school. So I feel a little weird defending the idea of treating the flag respectfully. But it annoys me when people have garments that are basically like they're just going to sit on the flag all day. Yeah, it's weird. The other thing that was interesting in the American Legion article about it is that, I mean, the

21:06 flag code does say if a flag is damaged or, you know, soiled beyond use. that it should be destroyed. And it does recommend burning as like a primary option, but everybody recognizes, particularly today, the flags are not always made of things that should be burned. That's true. Will release gross things into the air if you try to burn them, or they will just melt and create a hazard.

21:33 So you don't have to do that. They're like, just dispose of it in a respectful manner. That's all they want. There was a note in the EBSCO write-up about Beulah that said she had a brother who was a songwriter. But I don't know anything about that, but I find it fascinating. Their family sounds very interesting. One thing that came up a lot, and I couldn't find anything that really substantiated it or, like, talked about it from the point of view of, like, a personal letter or anything that would give it gravity, was that her parents were really supportive of her being an inventor, which is unique, you know, at a time when most girls were kind of...

22:09 brought up with the idea that they should be nice young ladies who then get married and become wives and mothers. I mean, they were willing to move to New York with her so that she could follow her dream, which is pretty terrific. There is a story about her that I didn't put in it because I love the story, but I couldn't... It was written about in, like, a third-hand account, and I couldn't find the newspaper article that it was referring to. Which is that as Beulah got famous, she was often asked to give... like to come and speak to various groups. And allegedly, during one of these talks, she just kind of stopped talking and started scribbling on a notepad that she had at the podium. And then

22:52 she was like, I'm so sorry, I just had, I just thought of the solution to a problem of an invention that I've been working on, and I just had to get it down. And I, to this day, I don't know if this evidences what a naturally suspicious person I am, that I'm like, Beulah, Was that for show? Yeah. Or maybe that really was what was going on with her. Yeah.

23:17 I mean, I want to have grace and not discount people in what they say they are experiencing or doing, but I was just like, Beulah, because there are a few things that made me go, Beulah. Parts of her story also remind me of other inventors that we've talked about on the show and not. Many, many years ago, I think I was at a job fair. I'm pretty sure it was a job fair, but there was a speaker at the job fair, and the speaker was the founder of Spanx. And she told the story of how she invented Spanx, specifically the footless pantyhose. And it was so similar in the I want to make footless pantyhose.

24:04 And speaking to like the men at the factory who would need to figure out how to make this work. And she clearly not having any concept of what it would take to make pantyhose and also to make them footless. And having kind of a similar encounter with the people who were going to have to figure out how to make it work. And that reminded me of I was reminded of that in some of the stories of Beulah trying to work things out with the fabricators. I made a weird face while you were telling that story because I think... I don't know if she still does, but I'm pretty sure the founder of Spanx lived here in Atlanta. Yeah.

24:47 And she gave a lot of talks. And I think I heard her tell that story at one point. Yeah. This was at a job there in Atlanta. If a job there is where it happened, it was definitely in Atlanta. Yeah, I mean, listen... I do get the idea of like, I'm just going to make it myself if you don't think it can happen. And a lot of times that is how innovation comes about. But it is also very funny to me. And I also have weird feelings about the whole like, Beulah is an inventor. She's not not an inventor, but she's more of like an envisioner. Oh, right. Yeah.

25:23 Because so many other people really had to step in and be like, okay, you have this concept. Yeah. Like, if it were something artistic, I would call her an art director rather than an artist. You know what I mean? But I don't... I don't... I don't know. She had a lot of patents. And she did maintain very long relationships with the people that she worked with. So... Clearly, they were happy working for her. It seemed like they would also sometimes be included in write-ups with the press, and they would always give really lovely quotes about working with her. I mean, granted, you can't always trust those, but one of the men that worked with her for more than 15 years had said he just loved it because she would just show up and be like, here's

26:05 what I need. And he would be like, I don't know, but okay, let's try it. And how that was actually kind of a fun... kind of job to have. I have a sad part of her story that I didn't put in the episode because it's not really important, but it just touched my heart. Hopefully I won't cry. But when we were talking about her pets and you said that's probably not great with birds, she didn't have pets all at the same time. And one of the reasons, to the best of my knowledge, she only ever had one cat. But she loved that cat so deeply. Yeah.

26:42 Her cat's name was Chickadee. And when Chickadee died, she described to a reporter that she was in such a state of grief that she went into like a fugue state and she just got on a bus and didn't really know what happened and kind of came to in Kansas City. Wow. That she had just been so stricken with grief over her fluffy baby that she just didn't function for a while. And who knows? She surely had a bus transfer at some point, but she was not there.

27:14 She kind of checked out for a little while and then presumably got home. The story ends at, I realized I was in Kansas City, so I'm assuming. Again, she was a woman with cash, so she could easily have been like, I will pay for ways to get home. But it's very sweet and it's very sad. But I don't think, my point was that I don't think she actually had cats at the same time she had the birds.

27:38 I think the birds came later. But it's sort of a sweet story. Yeah. Beulah, thank you for the chain stitch machine. I said we would talk about the chain stitch machine. Because lately I have seen chain stitch embroidery machines popping up everywhere in my social media feed. Like, do you remember after the NBA finals, did you see ever, there was a guy that had a handheld chain stitch machine and he was going out... you know, in the streets of New York where everybody was partying. And he would chain stitch, like, onto their regalia, like, there in the street. Like, he would customize it for them. And it's just a cool thing. And it's something a lot of chain stitch embroidery specialists have done in many cases. Like,

28:23 I've seen them do stuff like that at Wren fairs, etc. But I just loved it. And they've been in my feed a lot lately because I'm sure I've engaged with every chain-stitching embroidery machine post, and so they just keep feeding me more. Great, bring it on. Thank you, algorithm. But I just love it. And now when I think about it, I'm like, oh, this is kind of Beulah's legacy, is it? People can do these cool things. The other thing that I thought about while working on this, and I did not indulge myself, was the toy that I never got but wanted desperately as a kid. Which now I'm like, what a gross toy. Why would I want that?

28:57 I might as well have udders and dispense milk. Did you have a baby alive? I don't think I had a baby alive. I remember the ads for them. I wanted a baby alive so bad. The part that was about the plush toys with springs in them, that was my first thought, was that they would be kind of wiggly, not that they would be poseable and spring back to their original position. Yeah. Well, baby alive, as you may or may not recall, you would feed... And then you would have to change Baby Alive's diaper because it would use the bathroom. I think I'm thinking of a different doll.

29:37 Was Baby Alive kind of wiggly? Like, sort of a gelatinous i don't remember so okay now i gotta look it up i said i wasn't gonna because my fear is that if i start looking it up i'm gonna find one on some you know yeah vintage right doll thing and i won't Be able to resist it even though I don't really want a baby alive. They still make baby alive? Oh, no. I thought she was a one-shot wonder. They still make baby alive. And people apparently pack diaper bags for them? Oh, dear. Yeah, baby alive. Yeah, not wiggly. Okay. But she would go potty. Yeah. Why would I want that? Yeah. Yeah. I did have a doll that you could feed a bottle and then there would be liquid. And I also had a doll where that was fake. It was that there was the liquid

30:32 that would disappear into... I had that one. And then there was a doll that I don't remember what the name of it was that, like, just the physical makeup of the doll made it so that it was kind of wobbly, and that was what I was imagining with the springs until I got to the part of the paragraph that was like, so you could pose them and put them back. Yeah, the first baby alive was 1973. Listen, it was made by Kenner, who got a lot of my money anyway, because, hello, Star Wars action figures. And I'm pretty sure Kenner made the strawberry shortcake line, right?

31:13 I don't remember. Boy, I bought a lot of that with my allowance. Yeah. I loved, I loved, I lived for the strawberry shortcake snail cart. Uh-huh. Oh, maybe I need to find one of those. Baby alive, get out of here. But strawberry shortcake snail cart. Uh-huh. Surely I can find a use for that. Yeah. I'm trying not to buy as much superfluous stuff because my house is stuffed with superfluous stuff. And I really have been clearing out a lot. But I also still love nostalgia and I love toys. So, you know. But Kenner got so much money from me. They didn't need my Baby Alive dollars.

31:51 They got it all in Greedo action figures. Oh, play sets. Yeah. Which we still have. This is the best part of being an adult is that you can keep all your toys if you want. Play with them. Yeah. It's great. If you have time off this weekend and you have toys that you love, I hope you play with them. Take them out of the boxes. Give them a kiss.

32:12 take them on adventures. They can, you know, get as creative as you want. Although I was a very, I have always been a very creative person, but when it came to things like playtime, I was very rigid about like not crossing the streams ever, you know? Characters from Tatooine would not show up on Hoth even. Like I was very, very. Anyway, however you play, I hope you have a blast and you can get crazy with it.

32:38 I don't care if you take Baby Alive to Hoth. Do it if you want this weekend, if that's what makes you happy. Whatever makes you happy, I hope you get to do it. I hope that nobody bothers you while you're doing it and you get to have a very relaxed time of it. Or if it's something you do with people, I hope it's wonderful and everybody helps bring each other joy. We all need more of it.

32:58 We will be right back here on Monday with a brand new episode. We will also be back here tomorrow with a classic that you can listen to while you play with your toys. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.