Hi, I'm the History Guy. I love history and if you
love history too this is the channel for you. The U.S. has five branches to its military and most
Americans are familiar with the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force and the Coast Guard.
But the U.S. has seven uniformed services, and it's those other two uniformed services with
which Americans are not nearly as familiar. One of those is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Commissioned Corps, which was derived from the U.S. survey of the coast, and was
the subject of another episode of the History Guy. But the seventh service in many ways may be the
least understood, despite the fact that it has a rich history, has made enormous contributions
to the nation and to the world, and continues to play vital functions today. The history of
the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, is history that deserves to be remembered.
On July 16, 1789, U.S. President John Adams signed a bill entitled, “An Act for the relief of sick
and disabled seamen” to, as Adam described, preserved the general health and the interest
of safety and the revenue. In brief the act uses Congress's power to regulate commerce,
to authorize the deduction of 20 cents per month from the wages of seamen for the sole purpose of
funding medical care for sick and disabled seamen, as well as building additional hospitals for the
treatment of those seamen. Under the bill, the President was given authority to appoint
directors to each port and excess funds would be saved until they accumulated enough to build
federally operated hospitals. The hospitals were called marine hospitals with the first
established in Virginia in 1801, and the first specifically built for the purpose in Boston in
1803, and were owned and operated by the federal government. Originally the hospitals were all
in East Coast ports but eventually they were also be along the Gulf Coast, inland waterways,
and as the nation expanded, on the west coast. The directors and staff of the hospitals were the
predecessors of today's commissioned Corps. The early hospitals were underfunded and the location
of hospitals and hiring a staff was heavily influenced by politics. During the Civil War
both Federal and Confederate troops occupied the various hospitals and many fell out of service. By
the end of the war the service was struggling, and in an 1869 study by the Treasury Department,
determined that it needed reform, and so in 1870 the system was reorganized as the Marine Hospital
Service and in position to oversee the service, entitled the Supervising Surgeon, was created.
The first Supervising Surgeon, Civil War veteran John Maynard Woodworth, transformed the nature
of the medical staff. He instituted examinations for applicants, and medical staff were appointed
to the general service rather than a specific hospital. This reduced political influence and
professionalized the service, creating a cadre who would be assigned and moved as needed to
the various marine hospitals. Important also was that he organized the service along military lines
and for the first time, the medical staff were given uniforms. More importantly Woodward saw
an expanded role for the service beyond the care of injured seaman eventually getting,
for example, the authority for the service to enforce quarantine and publishing journals, in
that way the service became more broadly involved in public health. As a result of these expanded
responsibilities the title of Supervising Surgeon was changed in 1873 to something that is much more
familiar today, it became the Supervising Surgeon General. Woodworth also provided the service with
its distinctive seal featuring a fouled anchor representing the merchant seaman under the
surface of care and the catechism mercury, which fittingly represents both medicine and commerce.
Woodworth remained in the position as the nation's first Surgeon General until his death in 1879.
The services role again expanded in the area of public health under Woodworth's successor, John
B Hamilton. Because of its position at U.S. ports of entry, in close relationship with the Revenue
Cutter Service, the predecessor to the U.S. Coast Guard, the MHS was able to effectively manage
a quarantine and the service played an important role in controlling an epidemic of yellow fever in
1878 and of Asiatic cholera in 1892. It was in this era that in 1877 an officer of the marine
hospital service established a hygienic laboratory to apply the new science of bacteriology to the
study of infectious disease. The laboratory, under pioneering MHS physician John Kenyon,
was the nation's first federal bacteriology laboratory. In 1930 the laboratory was renamed
the U.S. National Institutes of Health and today is the primary agency of the United States government
responsible for biomedical and public health research with an annual budget of 37 billion
dollars. As the role the service expanded as the nation saw mass emigration and growth,
the service was given responsibility over the medical inspection of arriving immigrants,
helping to prevent the entry of disease into the country. In 1889 an act of Congress officially
recognized United States Public Health Service commissioned Corps as the uniform component
of the marine hospital service and in 1912 the name of the Public Health and Marine Service was
shortened to the Public Health Service which has evolved over time to include a number of roles,
in addition to the duties of the Commissioned Corps. When yellow fever struck troops during the
Spanish-American war, officers of the commissioned Corps were responsible for preventing an outbreak
in the U.S. brought back by returning troops. As a result of that service, Congress changed the
law so that the Corps could be militarized and considered to be a branch of the Armed Forces in
time of war or emergency by an act of Congress or executive order of the President. President Wilson
did so at the outset of the First World War and many of their professionals were detailed to the
Army and the Navy, the conditions of the war and army camps was a breeding ground for infectious
disease and the Corps had its hands full already when one of the worst outbreaks in human history,
the influenza pandemic of 1918 struck. The Corps expanded greatly during the pandemic which
eventually killed nearly a half million Americans. The Corps expanded again during the Second World
War with officers serving in all branches, eight members of the Corps lost their lives in
the conflict. In addition to providing medical support for the services, members of the Corps
played central roles managing infectious diseases among the world's refugees. It was also during the
war that to address the nation's critical shortage of nurses, a division of nurse education was added
to the Public Health Service and answerable to the Surgeon General in a program known as the
Cadet Nurse Corps. The wartime program which funded nursing education was credited with
helping to standardize nurse training in the United States and preventing the collapse of
civilian nursing care as so many nurses entered the military service. In 1946, another Second
World War program intended to control malaria in war areas was institutionalized under the
Public Health Service as, The Communicable Disease Center, today that organization is known as the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the Corps faced new challenges in the 1960s
as Congress expanded social programs the Public Health Service was put under the control of the
Assistant Secretary for Health, and for the first time in history, the Surgeon General was no longer
in charge of the entire Public Health Service. And then in 1981, Congress changed the entitlement for
healthcare for merchant seamen and the remaining marine hospitals, the reason the Corps was
founded, were closed. But with the changes the role the Surgeon General became a high-profile
role as the nation's advocate for public health. In 1964, Surgeon General Luther Terry unveiled a
groundbreaking report called Smoking and Health, report of the Advisory Committee of the Surgeon
General of the Public Health Service, this was the first significant report to lay out the effects
of tobacco and smoking and forever changed the public's understanding of both tobacco use and the
U.S. Surgeon General. The profile the position rose even further under Surgeon General C. Everett Coop
in the 1980s, whose championing of AIDS research understanding and prevention, opposition to
smoking, and advocacy for the rights of disabled children, made him perhaps the most well known
Surgeon General in history. While the court continues its vital public health role serving
under-served populations and engaging in research and health advocacy, perhaps its most high-profile
role is in disaster relief. Teams called Rapid Deployment Forces, work to serve the medical
needs of people displaced by storms, earthquakes and other disasters including deploying over a
thousand officers to New York City in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Officers of the Corps are often
deployed even before storm strikes, helping to evacuate critical patients before the storm
comes and then placing themselves in danger, riding out the storm so that they can respond immediately
in the storm's aftermath. Their role encompasses the world, and today officers of the Corps help
provide humanitarian aid and relief through the Pacific Partnership, which started as a response
to the devastating 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunami and then transformed into an annual
deployment designed to foster regional cooperation and includes providing humanitarian, medical,
dental and engineering assistance to nations of the Pacific. In the similar operation continuing
promise which provides medical, dental and veterinary aid to people in Latin America. Today
the National Public Health Service commissioned Corps consists of more than 6,700 serving officers
and has expanded to include professionals from 11 different professional categories,
and more than 50 allied health specialties, including nurses, scientists, social workers,
optometrists and veterinarians. They support health services for all seven uniformed services
as well as the federal state and local agencies in need, the Corps entirely consists of officers
who wear uniforms of the United States Navy or Coast Guard with Health Service insignia.
Officers of the Public Health Service commissioned Corps served with distinction in
the Spanish-American war, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. They've deployed
dozens of times for emergencies, natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes and
terrorist events. They are the force that protects the nation from outbreaks of infectious disease
and members of the Corps played critical roles in medical breakthroughs for everything from
smallpox and yellow fever to malaria and polio, and the Public Health Service commissioned Corps
provides critical medical care for under-served populations in the United States and throughout
the world. They are our nation's public health heroes and they have a long and underappreciated
history that goes back more than 200 years. It is a history that deserves to be remembered.
I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series of short snippits,
of forgotten history about 10 minutes long. If you
enjoyed this then please click the like button there on your left. If you have any questions or
comments then write them in the comment section and I would be happy to personally respond. And if you want
to get five minutes more of forgotten history, then click the button on your right, to subscribe.