Joseph Nathaniel McCormack (November 9, 1847 – May 4, 1922) was an American surgeon, a leader in several national medical organizations and a member of the Kentucky General Assembly.

[3] Because of the scarcity of schools in rural Kentucky in the 19th century, McCormack's early education was short but supplemented by his well-informed and widely traveled father.

[7] In 1882 McCormack, like many young doctors of the era, traveled to New York, London, Edinburgh and Vienna to further his medical education.

[8] Upon completing his medical education McCormack returned to his family home near New Haven, Kentucky and practiced medicine as a country doctor, quickly gaining a reputation as one of the most intrepid surgeons in the state.

As one of Kentucky's most respected physicians, McCormack was placed in charge of the team doctors attending William Goebel after the assassination attempt on the governor in 1900.

[11] McCormack left his practice of medicine in 1901 to concentrate on the activities of the Kentucky State Board of Health, his work with national organizations and his real estate ventures.

[8] A severe outbreak of smallpox in Middlesboro, Kentucky in 1898 brought national infamy to the state when, as reported in The New York Times, 69 citizens quarantined in the pesthouse were left without food for almost a week.

[17] Although McCormack found the incident in Middlesboro to be "unwarranted interference,"[18] he would later work closely and successfully with Wyman, Rupert Blue and other Surgeon Generals of the United States Public Health Service (USPHS).

[19] With very limited state or local funding for the board, McCormack was forced to rely on the passage of legislation to accomplish his goals.

[20] During every session of the Kentucky General Assembly he lobbied for larger appropriations, increased authority, the establishment of city and county boards of health and stricter medical licensing laws.

[8] In the process, he drafted all the public health legislation in the State as well as a medical practice act which gave KSBH the authority to examine and license physicians, chiropractors and osteopaths.

[21] In 1910 McCormack oversaw the modernization of the State Board of Health to include Bureaus of Vital Statistics, Sanitation, and Bacteriology.

[20] McCormack was responsible for soliciting tens of thousands of dollars from the Rockefeller Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease in Kentucky.

[19] The Commission provided funds for staff, public health education, field dispensaries and remodeling of the bacteriology laboratory for diagnosis and treatment of hookworm infection.

[19] One of McCormack's claims to fame is his design for the inexpensive Kentucky Sanitary Privy (KSP), an important improvement on the primitive outhouses used in most rural communities during the era.

The coalitions he fostered furthered the causes of municipal sanitation, child welfare, pure food and drug legislation and disease prevention.

Many of the leaders he worked with achieved national prominence in their respective fields, putting Kentucky in the forefront of numerous public health arenas.

After the bill won passage she included lessons on health, sanitation and nutrition when she wrote the Country Life Reader books for national adult illiteracy programs.

[27] McCormack and Robert McDowell Allen, head of the Division of Food Control at the University of Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, worked closely together in the decades-long campaign for clean and tuberculin-free milk.

Joseph McCormack was responsible for passage of the "Big Health Bill" that more than doubled the state's financial appropriation for the KSBH from $30,000 to $75,000.

In 1907 the American Association for the Advancement of Science established the "Committee of One Hundred on National Health" by appointing McCormack, Irving Fisher, Jane Addams, Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell, Booker T Washington, Hermann Biggs and 93 other influential Americans to coordinate and promote efforts to establish a cabinet level national health department.

He told them of the dangers of patent medicines, of the ways to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, and of the need for legislation in favor of pure food, water and milk.

To this end, he worked with his Bowling Green colleague, John Blackburn, to develop a program of basic sciences and therapies to be used for postgraduate study by local medical societies.