UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 353 



UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 1 



By ALFRED C. REED, M.D. 



ASSISTANT SURGEON, UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 



THE wide-spread ignorance of the various means employed by the 

 federal government to promote the well-being of its citizens is 

 nowhere better exemplified than in the common ignorance of the func- 

 tions and important work of the Public Health Service. This ignorance 

 is the more lamentable inasmuch as the Public Health Service is the 

 sole national agency operating to combat and prevent epidemic diseases 

 among human beings, and to improve public sanitation and hygiene, in 

 the United States. The awakening national conscience in public health 

 affairs lends peculiar interest at this time to a consideration of the va- 

 ried arid important functions exercised by this service, and the fasci- 

 nating history of its achievements. 



The Marine Hospital Service is one of the oldest and most pecul- 

 iarly American of all our institutions. Its beginning was in an act of 

 congress of July 16, 1798, which put a. tax of twenty cents a month on 

 every seaman of the United States, to be taken from his wages. The 

 occasion for this procedure had been well explained by Hon. William 

 Williamson in the House of Representatives away back in 1792. 



Wherever it is probable that sailors may be sick, there I would make pro- 

 vision for their support and comfort. Hospitals should he erected or lodgings 

 hired at every port of entry in the United States, for sick and infirm seamen, 

 where they may be properly attended during their indispositions. The money to 

 be collected at the several ports as hospital money should be expended in those 

 same ports alone, under care of such a person as may be designated for that 

 purpose. 



The first hospital owned by the government was at Washington's 

 Point, Norfolk County, Virginia. This was purchased in 1800. Three 

 years later a Marine Hospital was completed at Boston. At about the 

 same time, the money collected by taxation of seamen was transformed 

 into a general fund for medical relief work among sailors. The same 

 legislation made provision for the establishment of the service in New 

 Orleans, which was not then a part of the United States. 



After a time the seamen's tax was not sufficient to maintain the 

 constantly broadening work, which had to be correspondingly restricted 

 in its usefulness. No chronic or incurable diseases were treated, nor 

 was any patient kept longer than four months. Sailors in those days 

 fared poorly," and their life was a hard one indeed. Especially was this 

 true on the Mississippi River system, which was a great water-highway 



1 The author is indebted to Surgeon George W. Stoner, Chief Medical Officer 

 at Ellis Island, for many facts concerning the earlier history of the Public 

 Health and Marine Hospital Service. 



