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.
