EAN: 9780349009261

THE BLACK ANGELS - MARIA SMILIOS KARTONIERT (TB)

New York City  1929.   A sanatorium  a deadly disease  and a dire nurse shortage.   So begins
the remarkable true story of the Black nurses who helped cure tuberculosis  one of the world's
deadliest plagues  told alongside the often strange chronicle of the cure's discovery.   During
those dark pre-antibiotic days  when tuberculosis killed 1 in 7 people  white nurses at Sea
View  New York's largest municipal hospital  began quitting. Desperate to avert a public health
crisis  city officials summoned Black southern nurses  luring them with promises of good pay  a
career  and an escape from the strictures of Jim Crow. But after arriving  they found
themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island  yet again confronting
racism and consigned to a woefully understaffed facility  dubbed 'the pest house' where 'no one
left alive'.  Spanning the Great Depression and moving through World War II and beyond  this
story follows the intrepid young women  the 'Black Angels'  who  for twenty years  risked their
lives working under dreadful conditions while caring for the city's poorest - 1 800 souls
languishing in wards  waiting to die or become 'guinea pigs' for experimental (often deadly)
drugs. Yet despite their major role in desegregating the NYC hospital system - and vital work
in the race for the cure for tuberculosis and subsequently helping to find it at Sea View -
these nurses were completely erased from history. The Black Angels recovers the voices of these
extraordinary women and puts them at the centre of this riveting story celebrating their legacy
and spirit of survival.

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