Science journalist Maria Smilios was editing a book on orphan lung diseases when one line caught her attention. In a chapter about a rare lung disease, the author commented that perhaps a cure could be discovered as quickly as the cure for tuberculosis was found at Sea View Hospital on Staten Island in the 1950s.
Smilios began researching and learned how the first clinical trial for a lifesaving antibiotic happened at Sea View under the watchful supervision of experienced nurses — all of them Black women. But she could find little more about the nurses.
“These women had been completely erased from history,” Smilios says. “There was not a single thing about them. Nothing.”
She set out to uncover their story and learn about the nurses who physicians said were responsible for the success of the Sea View drug trial and the discovery of a cure for tuberculosis.
Read More: 8 Amazing Black Scientists and How They Changed History
The Women Behind the Cure
Tuberculosis (TB) has plagued humans for thousands of years and has even show up in the archeological record dating back 9,000 years ago. Written record of TB goes back 3,300 years. At times, this disease was as deadly as the plague and was responsible for as many as 25 percent of deaths in the U.S. and Europe between the 1600s and the 1800s.
In New York in the late 1920s, TB was more common among the poor who lived in crowded, often unsanitary conditions. They were sent to Sea View, where the administration struggled to employ nurses. White nurses were afraid of the disease, quit, and sought employment elsewhere rather than risk infection.
The hospital began recruiting Black nurses, particularly women from the South who were qualified nurses but unable to find meaningful employment due to segregation.
In the following decades, these nurses provided patient care, assisted in surgery, and became experts on the disease.
“They knew the ebb and flow of the disease. They knew the nuances. They knew that one moment, a patient could be fine, the next they could be choking. TB is long and drawn out,” says Smilios, author of The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis.
Their expertise became critical to the drug trial, which was overseen by physician Edward Robitzek.
“Robitzek said if it hadn’t been for the Black nurses, the trial would have never happened,” Smilios says.
Finding the Cure TB
A photo of Clemmie Phillips (Credit: Elizabeth Plair)
The trial began in secret in May 1951. Robitzek was approached by a drug company with an opportunity to test a new antibiotic, isoniazid. It had never been tested on humans, only animals.
“This was the first human trial, there was no data on side effects or curative rates,” Smilios says.
Robitzek picked five patients and asked if they would be willing to participate in the trial. He then organized the nurses entrusted with overseeing the first phase, including Missouria Meadows-Walker, Edna Sutton, Janie B. Shirley, Clemmie Phillips, and Stiversa Bethel.
In June 1951, the nurses gave their trial patients the first dose of isoniazid. For the next six weeks, they continued to dose the patients daily and monitor them constantly. They took intense notes in logbooks that Robitzek collected each evening.
The nurses were so keenly aware of their patient’s conditions Smilios says they were able to identify any minute change. For example, twitching was one side effect of the drug, but the patients slept under heavy blankets. The nurses knew the patients so well that they were able to detect even the subtlest of movements.
“The astuteness tells you how meticulous they were in their work,” Smilios says.
Patients also experienced a sensation of giddiness, increased appetite, weight gain, and ringing in their ears. The nurses documented all changes, organized the data, and presented it to Robitzek for further analysis.
The initial trial was a success, and Robitzek recruited 92 more patients and more Black Angels to participate. Eventually, the trial would determine isoniazid was most effective when used with two other antibiotics.
By early 1952, newspapers were announcing the cure had been found, and trial patients at Sea View were thriving. Robitzek was quoted, honored and remembered in history.
The nurses, however, were almost all but forgotten.
The Hidden History of the TB Nurses
A photo of Missouri Meadows-Walker (Credit: Bernice Alleyne)
When Smilios began her research in 2015, few Black Angels were still living. One of them, Virginia Allen, then 86, agreed to meet with Smilios for regular interviews. She shared names and contact information for the nurses’ families who passed on oral histories, photos, letters, and other artifacts.
Then, Robitzek’s son supplied Smilios with his father’s records, including detailed notes from the TB trial.
Smilios learned how the nurses were treated when they first came to New York. Some patients refused to acknowledge them, and they endured mistreatment — the worst being when angry patients coughed and aimed their infected phlegm directly at the nurses’ faces.
Given their closeness with the patients, the nurses were at high risk for TB, and some did contract the disease and had to leave the job. But for decades, the Black Angels were a constant at Sea View, providing patient care during an increasingly desperate time.
The Impact of TB
A photo of Virginia Allen (Credit: Maria Smilios)
TB germs typically grow in the lungs but can develop in other places like the kidney, spine, or lymph nodes. At Sea View, surgeons tried to cut out infected parts of the lung to save the person, but few patients left the hospital alive. Some stayed for years before passing away, and nurses cared for patients who were often depressed or anxious about their future.
After the success of the drug trial, however, even long-term patients were able to leave the hospital. The last TB patient left Seaview in 1961.
TB remains a deadly infectious disease. In 2023, almost 11 million people globally contracted TB, and 1.25 million people died from it.
Antibiotics are still used to treat TB, including isoniazid, the drug that began in a secret trial at Sea View Hospital under the watchful eye of the Black Angels.
Read More: What Is the Drug Bedaquiline and Why Is It Important for Those With Tuberculosis?
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Emilie Lucchesi has written for some of the country’s largest newspapers, including The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and an MA from DePaul University. She also holds a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Illinois-Chicago with an emphasis on media framing, message construction and stigma communication. Emilie has authored three nonfiction books. Her third, A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy, releases October 3, 2023, from Chicago Review Press and is co-authored with survivor Kathy Kleiner Rubin.
