Mapping Networks

One evening in the second half of August 1906, the well to do Warren family, vacationing in Oyster Bay, Long Island, had their favourite dessert: fresh sliced peaches, served with ice cream. It was a speciality of their cook for the summer, Mary Mallon. Ice cream was still a small luxury, and August had been hot. The temperature in central New York had peaked in the mid-thirties Celsius at the start of the month, and it had been thundery and humid, with frequent storms, followed by a prolonged dry spell. It was much healthier to be out of the city in such weather – typhoid, an endemic disease in the United States at that time, was particularly active in the hot summer months, and it thrived in urban environments.