Miss Evers’ Boys By David Feldshuh: Deception And Trust

When starting something new, it is easy for one to find trust in a superior or somebody else with prior experience with the activity or trade that is trying to be learned. A high school student could go to school and learn a specific way to write a paper; however, the way that student is learning could be completely wrong and soon the student will develop long lasting bad habits. Regardless, the student will be unaware simply because they do no know any better and putting all of their trust in their instructor to teach the correct ways to write a paper. It easy to manipulate somebody into doing something wrong or doing something wrong to them when they are unaware of what is correct.

In David Feldshuh’s play, Miss Evers’ Boys, the doctors, Douglas and Brodus, who study the group of black men infected with syphilis are mistreating and manipulating the men into thinking they are getting the help they need. Nurse, Eunice Evers, is working on this government study of syphilis and gains the trust of men to believe that how the doctors are treating them is actually helping them improve their health. In this play, Nurse Evers plays the middle man between the men and government study working doctors who misleads the infected men into believing the government is sincerely trying to see them get help and cure their disease. In the beginning of the play, Evers meets up with the group of men in a schoolhouse and immediately begins to converse with them and try to create a bond to which the men can trust her. Knowing that she is also from the town, the men find it easy to trust her because of that and the fact that she is also well educated and is a nurse. It takes some time for the men to fully trust in her, but Evers relentlessly makes an effort for them to participate in the study of syphilis. She tells the men, “This is a good thing. We don’t get a lot of chances around here to say, ‘no’, to a good thing”. It is not a good thing to be infected with syphilis, but what Evers is trying to convince the men into believing what is a good thing is the care they will receive from doctors. She emphasizes how rare it is to be gifted something as good as the care they will receive, and wants the men to believe that they will get help. Because the men are still mostly unaware of what is going on, they believe that what she is saying is true because she just seems to know more than they do. Little do they know that Evers is also unaware of what type of treatment they will actually receive, but she is simply manipulating the men into something unfair just as the government is manipulating her into believing what she is doing is the right thing.

Throughout the play, it becomes apparent that the doctors have very little intention of actually tending towards the men’s needs. Doctors Brodus and Douglas are only trying to study the men and hope to be able to find enough evidence so that the government will continue to fund their study. In a conversation among the doctors and Evers, Douglas says, “We follow these patients for six months. We catalogue what this disease untreated does to them. And then we let the facts speak for themselves”. Douglas makes it clear that they are using the men solely for their own study of the disease. Their intention is to never help cure their disease because they plan to let it go untreated. By viewing the outcomes of the men, they using it for future reference and knowledge on how to treat other infected people, but not the group in their study. The doctors are willing to sacrifice the diminishing health and possibly the lives of these men to help others and not them. These men are just as unhealthy as any other with the disease, yet they refuse to actually help despite telling the men that they will get help from them. They are using the men without their full knowledge of what is going on and their consent. Although the men are never going to get any help, Evers continues to let them believe they are getting all the help they can get. At one point, Evers receives a job offer elsewhere and contemplates taking the job. When talking to one of the men from the study, Ben Washington, she tells him, “there are some things that you just can’t keep doing because if you do them, you know you going to become twisted in your mind”. Evers knows that what is going on within the study is wrong and that the men are never going to get any help. She believes that if she stays she will start to believe that what she is doing is right; however, she wants to leave because she does not want to carry the thought of her wrong doings with her. Even though she knows the study is giving the men false hope, she believes that if she stays she can help alleviate some of the wrongful things that are being done to the men.

Later in the study, the men start to recognize that things are not necessarily getting better for them. They notice that others with syphilis outside of the study are getting different treatment that include the penicillin medication. Another man from the study, Caleb Humphries, becomes well aware of his peers who are getting treatment and healing faster than he is. He confronts Evers and she says to him, “They’re not in danger from this penicillin. You all are. It could make holes in your heart. Make it explode”. Evers is actively participating in the government’s lies that the men will receive the best help they could get. She is creating excuses as to why not to issue the penicillin to Caleb and the men even though it could possibly help them. She deceives the men into thinking the medicine is more harmful than helpful. This is ironic because the help the men are receiving is more harmful than helpful. To Evers’ favor, the actual side effects of penicillin are unknown and could actually cause more harm to the men. But, in their condition, it is probably still worth the risk to issue the penicillin knowing that is proven to help the disease.

The doctors are strictly sticking to their plan to not treat the men at all and they continue to use and manipulate them. In the oath that Evers claims to take, she pledges, “To devote herself to the welfare of those patients committed to her care”. Throughout the time she works for doctors Brodus and Douglas she is aware of the fact that they do not intend to help the men in their study. Those men are committed to her care, however she is not devoting herself to their welfare. She knows the entire time that they are going to receives no help but she continues to let them believe that they will. If she is really devoting herself to their welfare, she would ensure that these men get the help that they need; instead, the men are left to be used by the government study and sacrificed without ever actually knowing they will ever receive help.