1. A person of either sex who spreads a disease he or she is immune to. 2. A jinx. [After the nickname given to Mary Mallon, a XIX Irish immigrant who worked in NYC as a cook.]
HISTORIC. The existence of immune carriers of typhoid infection had earlier been documented in Europe, when in 1888 an outbreak of typhoid fever sent U. S. public health authorities in search of such a carrier. The poor wretch turned out to be Mary, an immigrant girl with no way of making a living except as a cook and domestic. Since there seemed to be no charges on which Mary Mallon could be held, she was released but forbidden to work as a cook, food handler, or domestic. Mary, however, had to eat; and after another outbreak of typhoid fever in N. Y. in 1906, she was once more tracked down and found to be working as a cook under an assumed name. Since there were was no known way to change her physical nature as a carrier, U. S. health authorities classified her as a menace to public health and kept her confined and isolated until she died in 1938, probably with some choice but unrecorded reflections on the gifts of the gods.
from A Browser's Dictionary: A Compendium of Curious Expressions & Intriguing Facts by John Ciardi
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