United States Public Health Service - History

History

The origins of the Public Health Service can be traced to the passage, by the 5th Congress, of An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen in 1798. The earliest marine hospitals created to care for the seamen were located along the East Coast, with Boston being the site of the first such facility; later they were also established along inland waterways, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Coasts. Funding for the hospitals was provided by a mandatory tax of about 1% of the wages of all maritime sailors.

A reorganization in 1870 converted the loose network of locally controlled hospitals into a centrally controlled Marine Hospital Service, with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The position of Supervising Surgeon (later Surgeon General) was created to administer the Service, and John Maynard Woodworth was appointed as the first incumbent in 1871. He moved quickly to reform the system and adopted a military model for his medical staff, instituting examinations for applicants and putting his physicians in uniforms. Woodworth created a cadre of mobile, career service physicians who could be assigned as needed to the various marine hospitals. The commissioned officer corps (now known as the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service or the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps) was established by legislation in 1889. At first open only to physicians, over the course of the twentieth century, the Corps expanded to include veterinarians, dentists, physician assistants, sanitary engineers, pharmacists, nurses, environmental health officers, scientists, and other health professionals.

The scope of activities of the Marine Hospital Service also began to expand well beyond the care of merchant seamen in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, beginning with the control of infectious disease. Quarantine was originally a state function rather than federal, but the National Quarantine Act of 1878 vested quarantine authority to the Marine Hospital Service and the National Board of Health. The National Board was not reauthorized by Congress in 1883 and its powers reverted to the Marine Hospital Service. Over the next half a century, the Marine Hospital Service increasingly took over quarantine functions from state authorities.

As immigration increased dramatically in the late nineteenth century, the Federal Government also took over the processing of immigrants from the states, beginning in 1891. The Marine Hospital Service was assigned the responsibility for the medical inspection of arriving immigrants at sites such as Ellis Island in New York. Commissioned officers played a major role in fulfilling the Service's commitment to prevent disease from entering the country.

Because of the broadening responsibilities of the Service, its name was changed in 1902 to the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, and again in 1912 to just the Public Health Service. The Service continued to expand its public health activities as the nation entered the twentieth century, with the Commissioned Corps leading the way. As the century progressed, PHS commissioned officers served their country by controlling the spread of contagious diseases such as smallpox and yellow fever, conducting important biomedical research, regulating the food and drug supply, providing health care to underserved groups, supplying medical assistance in the aftermath of disasters, and in numerous other ways.

Today the mission of the Commissioned Corps of the PHS is "Protecting, promoting, and advancing the health and safety of the Nation."