1. What was Typhoid Mary’s ethnicity
a) English
b) Irish
c) Jewish
d) African-American
e) American born
2. How many people are thought to have died as a result of Typhoid Mary’s activities?
a) fewer than 5
b) about 15
c) about 50
d) about 150
e) more than 1,000
3. The causative agent of typhoid fever is a member of the genus
a) Salmonella
b) Vibrio
c) Treponema
d) Mycobacterium
e) Helicobacter
4. When did life on earth begin?
a) 4-5 thousand years ago
b) 400-500 thousand years ago
c) 40-50 million years ago
d) 4-5 billion years ago
e) 400-500 billion years ago
5. Typhoid Mary was actively spreading disease during the years
a) during the American Civil War
b) just before World War I
c) during the height of the Depression
d) just after World War II
6. During the time of Kuru, the Fore women
a) Spoke of their cannibalism quite openly, but ate the flesh in a privacy that
bordered on secrecy
b) Ate the flesh openly, but spoke of their cannibalism only within their own tribe
c) Ate the flesh openly and discussed the practices quite openly
d) Ate the flesh and discussed the practices only under a promise of secrecy
e) Refused to admit to the practice and told the uninitiated women that the flesh was that of a pig
7. At the end of the nineteenth century, many people still believed in the close connection between miasmas and disease. What is a miasma?
a) a poisonous vapor rising from rotting material and initiating disease in people
b) an imbalance between the body’s four humours
c) a deep sadness characterized by swooning and generally thought to refer to what we now know as “clinical depression”
d) an evil spirit carried on the night wind, especially a northeast wind.
e) a microorganism
8. The probability of death for a person who contracted typhoid fever in pre-antibiotic America was about
a) 1%
b) 10%
c) 50%
d) 90%
e) 99.9%
9. There are three fundamentally different types of life on earth.
a) These are the plants, the animals, and the microbes|
b) These are the pathogenic bacteria, the non-pathogenic bacteria, and a group that includes both plants and animals
c) These are the animals, the plants and bacteria, and the phagocytes
d) The most ancient evolutionary separation between these groups is represented by the plants and animals, with the archaebacteria and eubacteria begin more recently diverged.
e) Two of the groups include only single celled organisms and the third includes both single-celled organisms and large multicellular organisms
10. Stomach ulcers are caused most often by|
a) Salmonella typhi
b) Salmonella enterica
c) Helicobacter pylori
d) stress and spicy foods
e) environmental carcinogens
11. The part of the brain that is thought to be responsible for balance, muscle tone, and timing the coordination of voluntary muscle movements is the
a) Cerebrum
b) Cerebellum
c) Brain stem
d) Status epilepticus
e) Creutzfeldt-Jakob center
12. In the 1920’s, health department officials thought female carriers of typhoid fever were more dangerous than male carriers because
a) 100% of the known carriers were female
b) women did most of the cooking in families and as servants
c) women had just gained the right to vote
d) women were biologically more susceptible to infections
e) social norms generally required a higher degree of cleanliness for men than for women
13. The health department wanted samples to test “Typhoid Mary” for the presence of the typhoid fever germ. Which of these did they NOT request?
a) feces
b) urine
c) blood
d) sputum
14. A normal, healthy human being
a) carries no bacteria at all (is sterile from a bacteriological point of view)
b) carries some bacteria, but only non-pathogenic ones
c) carries some bacteria, but only pathogenic ones
d) carries a mix of pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria and would be sicker of they were all removed
e) carries a mix of pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria and would be even healthier if they were all removed
15. What was Mary Mallon’s profession
a) Nurse
b) Nanny
c) Cleaning lady
d) Cook
e) Laundress
16. The disease of animals that most resembled Kuru in its pathology and epidemiology was
a) Louping Ill
b) Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
c) Equine Encephalitis
d) Scrapie
e) Typhoid Fever
17. The lesson of “Typhoid Mary” lives on in a sign we see posted quite frequently, namely:
a) “Pasteurized”
b) “Spitting is prohibited”
c) “Reg. Pa. Dept. of Agriculture”
d) “No oysters in months without an R”
e) “Employees must wash hands before returning to work”
18. “Typhoid Mary” was brought before a judge in 1909, two years after her initial detection. That judge
a) released her on the promise that she would never cook again
b) released her without conditions
c) ordered that her detention on North Brother Island be continued
d) found her and the health department both to be at fault and ordered her detained until she paid half of the court costs
19. Inoculation of the chimpanzee “Georgette” with brain material from a Kuru patient
a) Induced an immune response and caused a partial reversal of the symptoms she developed after being infected with the agent that causes Scrapie
b) Led to all the behavioral symptoms typical of Kuru, but not the brain pathology
c) Led to all the brain pathology typical of Kuru but not the behavioral symptoms
d) Led to both the behavioral symptoms and the brain pathology typical of Kuru
e) Had no effect on her at all. She remained healthy until she died during an outbreak of tuberculosis in the primate facility several years later
20. Among the Fore, the one group who seemed NOT to develop Kuru (or not very often) was
a) Adult married women
b) Adult unmarried women
c) Adult males
d) Young boys
e) Young girls
21. Bacteria grow by binary fision and that results in exponential growth. If a single bacterium is allowed to double every 20 minutes, how long will it take for it to become more than a thousand bacteria?
a) 20 minutes
b) 200 minutes
c) 1,000 minutes (16.7 hours)
d) 333.3 hours
e) 1000 hours
22. The most common mode of transmission of Typhoid Fever in the US is
a) blood-blood contact
b) dried sputum
c) fecal-oral transfer
d) sexual intercourse
e) insect bites