“When all the wounds of war are healed/And hate’s grim sorrows fade/With pulsing heart we’ll read the part/The Red Cross Nurses played,” reads a poem in the Nov. 23, 1918 publication of The Oteen.

“When all the wounds of war are healed/And hate’s grim sorrows fade/With pulsing heart we’ll read the part/The Red Cross Nurses played,” reads a poem in the Nov. 23, 1918 publication of The Oteen.
In March 1918, construction began on a new hospital in Asheville. The facility was specifically built for World War I soldiers infected with tuberculosis.
In 1906, Dr. William Green Torrence arrived in Asheville. Four years later, he would set up the city’s first African-American hospital inside his home on Eagle Street.
Tuberculosis has gone by many names: consumption, white plague, lunger, TB. In the 19th century it’s estimated that the disease killed seven million people per year. It wouldn’t be until 1882 that Robert Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus. This, paired with the introduction of immunotherapy, offered possible methods of treatment. There were several earlier pioneers, however, […]