Search results for ""author maria smilios""

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.'It's everything that I love. It's about women whose names have been forgotten - until now. I am so passionate about it' Sandi Toksvig, BBC Two Between the Covers'Wonderfully told... an invaluable restoration of another of history's racially biased omissions' Diana Evans'Their triumphant story has until now been almost completely neglected' The BooksellerDuring 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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Black Angels tells the true story of 300 black nurses who changed the course of history, beginning in 1929 when white nurses staged a walk out at Staten Island's 2000-bed TB sanatorium, threatening New York with a public health catastrophe. City health officials made a radical decision to sanction a national call for 'colored nurses'. Lured by the promise of good pay, education, housing and most of all, a rare opportunity to work in a hospital free of quotas and segregated wards, 'Black Angels' from all over the country boarded trains and buses to enter wards that held both hope and danger. Their triumphant story, bringing together medicine, politics, racial strife, women's rights and cutting-edge science, has up until now been almost completely ignored. Maria Smilios has been working with one of the Black Angels - Virginia Allen, now aged 84 - as well as ex-patients whom the Angels cared for.

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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.''Gripping'' New York Times''Wonderfully told... an invaluable restoration of another of history''s racially biased omissions'' Diana Evans''Their triumphant story has until now been almost completely neglected'' The Bookseller''Informative, enthralling, and sometimes appalling, this is history at its best'' BooklistDuring 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

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