Acres of skin: human experiments at Holmesburg Prison. A true story of abuse and exploitation in the name of medical science

legislators, regulators, and the main labour union all too often combined to protect their own pecuniary interests at the expense of mine workers' health, welfare, and lives. Only with the development of grass roots activism, supported by independent medical expertise (for many years a rare commodity in the American workplace) and the civil rights movement was this unholy alliance outmanoeuvred. In the face of such pressure, vested interests capitulated, but their acceptance both of the existence of CWP and of the need for remedial measures was born out of self-interest and the desire to forestall the possibility that they might be forced to bear the burden of compensating all ageing miners with lung infections, regardless of the origin of such disease. In many respects Derickson's line of argument will be familiar to anyone acquainted with the burgeoning literature on the history of occupational health and safety in the USA. Nevertheless, meticulously researched, elegantly written, and handsomely produced as it is, Black lung is an important and welcome addition to the history of health in the twentieth-century American workplace.