THE AIMS OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 



By Thomas Parran, M. D., Phar. D. 

 Surgeon General Public Health Service U. S. A. 



It is a signal honor for any member of my profession to be honored 

 by this venerable and vigorous institution of learning. I accept this 

 degree with profound gratitude and appreciation, recognizing that it is 

 less of a personal tribute than it is a recognition of the growing im- 

 portance of the specialty which I represent. 



Like the PhUadelpliia College of Pharmacy whose one hundred and 

 sixteenth anniversary we are celebrating today, the Public Health 

 Service had its birth here in Philadelphia. It was in 1798 when John 

 Adams was President, that Congress passed "an act for the relief of 

 sick and disabled seamen." Under its provisions a deduction of 20 

 cents per month was made from the wages of each seaman on the 

 merchant ships of the United States. The funds were deposited with 

 the collector of customs in a marine hospital fund and used to build and 

 operate a series of hospitals in the principal ports. 



This was the beginning of a Federal medical service, and, inciden- 

 tally, the first health insurance system. In the latter connection it is 

 interesting to note that after operating for nearly a hundred years as a 

 contributory scheme, financed by employee contributions through a 

 pay-roll check-off, it was replaced by a tonnage tax on the ships, viz, 

 employer payments, and later supported by general taxation, viz, 

 State medicine. The terms "health insurance" and "State medicine" 

 had not yet been coined. In fact they now connote new and radical 

 departures in medical practice, yet since 1798 we have had one or the 

 other form of socialized medicine for this one group of wage earners. 

 From this disconnected system of marine hospitals, a national Marine 

 Hospital Service grew. The doctors in these hospitals frequently were 

 the first to diagnose and treat exotic diseases. Because of this they 

 were consulted by local health authorities when yellow fever or cholera 

 threatened. The earher system of State-operated quarantine stations 

 lacked uniformity, and by 1893, it became obvious that this should be a 

 Federal function. 



• An address delivered at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, Philadelphia, Pa., 

 Founder's Day, February 23, 1937. Reprinted by permission from the American Journal of Pharmacy, 

 March 1937. 



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