logo
episode-header-image
Oct 2023
35m 14s

Disease killers: the black nurses who co...

IMMEDIATE MEDIA
About this episode
Tuberculosis – otherwise known as the ‘Great White Plague’ – was a scourge on society and killed countless sufferers. Rhiannon Davies spoke to Maria Smilios to find out about the little-known story of the black nurses of New York’s Seaview Hospital who helped fight the disease – and were part of the historic drug trials of the 1950s that saw the arrival of a ... Show More
Up next
Today
Juana Inés de la Cruz: life of the week
She led “a life that really, in many ways, shouldn't have been possible”. So says historian Paul Gillingham of Juana Inés de la Cruz. This 17th-century polymath and nun challenged a host of social conventions – earning, through her extraordinary books and poems, a place in the pa ... Show More
30m 40s
Yesterday
The forgotten wars that redefined Europe
While the crusades raged across the Holy Land in the southern Levant, the kingdoms of central and northern Europe were engaged in their own battle to extend Christendom. Speaking to James Osborne, Aleks Pluskowski details how and when the Baltic crusades – or Northern crusades – ... Show More
42m 28s
Mar 1
Does Magna Carta matter today?
Politicians invoke it, activists wield it, and legal thinkers debate what it can offer the modern world. But what does Magna Carta really mean today? In this fourth and final episode of HistoryExtra's Sunday Series on the charter, Emily Briffett and historian Nicholas Vincent con ... Show More
38m 15s
Recommended Episodes
Jan 2023
Syphilis
<p>From Acts of Parliament to unethical clinical studies to legendary symphonies (possibly) - syphilis has stained many different areas of history.</p><p>To find out what this disease is, what it does to the body and how treatments of it and the people who have it have changed, K ... Show More
41m 32s
Nov 2022
Plagues
<p>From a plague in Athens during the Peloponnesian War in 430 BCE, to another in 540 that wiped out half the population of the Roman empire, down through the Black Death in the Middle Ages and on through the 1918 flu epidemic (which killed between 50 and 100 million people) and ... Show More
22m 33s
Sep 2021
The Black Death
In October 1347, a ghostly fleet of trading ships docks at a port in Sicily. The crew members – dead already, or well on their way – bear bubonic plague. The ‘Great Pestilence’ will ravage the populations of three continents over the next decade. What changes to society will resu ... Show More
52m 22s
Feb 2022
146. Disease vs. the rise of civilisation
The way we die has been utterly transformed. There have been around 10,000 generations of human beings, but only in the last 3 or 4 have infectious diseases not been an expected and accepted cause of death. What drove the most deadly infectious diseases? Was technological progr ... Show More
39m 40s
Sep 2020
Tuskegee Syphilis Study Part 2: The Truth
<p>“It’s like these men are being held in a bubble as science marches forward.” Mike tells Sarah how one of history&apos;s most unethical experiments came crashing down. Digressions include the history of penicillin, the power of TV movies and the mysterious diagnosis of &quot;Sa ... Show More
1h 10m
Mar 2020
The Deadliest Pandemic in Modern History
April 5, 1918. The first mention of a new influenza outbreak in Kansas appears in a public health report. That strain, later called the Spanish Flu, would go on to kill at least 50 million people worldwide. In a time before widespread global travel, how did this disease spread so ... Show More
21m 24s
Mar 2023
Bad Blood, Bad Science
<p>The word "Tuskegee" has come to symbolize the Black community's mistrust of the medical establishment. It has become American lore. However, most people don't know what actually happened in Macon County, Alabama, from 1932 to 1972. This episode unravels the myths of the U.S. P ... Show More
59m 4s
Sep 2020
The Black Death
Between 75 million and 200 million people died in the Black Death, or Plague, which caused social, economic and religious upheavals that had a profound effect on the course of European history. How did the Black Death come about? How did if affect particular populations? For how ... Show More
16m 15s
Aug 2022
The Deadly Puzzle of Yellow Fever
August 27, 1900. Dr. Jesse Lazear, a U.S. Army surgeon, walks into Las Animas Hospital Yellow Fever ward in Havana Cuba, toting a brood of mosquitos. He has the system down: remove the cotton stopper that keeps the mosquito penned in its glass vial, turn the vial over, and seal i ... Show More
33m 12s
Feb 2023
Scarlet Fever
<p>Scarlet fever is treatable with antibiotics, but in the middle of the 19th century, it was the leading cause of death in children in some parts of the world. Today, there are several ongoing mysteries about the disease.</p> <p><strong>Research:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Branswell, ... Show More
36m 16s
Listen to millions of songs and podcasts on Anghami