Marine Hospital Service

The origins of the system of Marine Hospitals can be traced to the passage, by the 5th Congress of the United States, of "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen" in 1798.

[7] They were initially located along the East Coast, at the harbors of the major port cities, with Boston being the site of the first such facility, followed later by others including in the Baltimore vicinity at Curtis Bay.

In 1869, Dr. John Shaw Billings, a prominent Army surgeon, was appointed to head an investigation of the Marine Hospital Fund.

Dr. Woodworth required his physicians to be a mobile work force stationed where the service was in need, and he mandated the daily wear uniforms.

[8] Woodworth created a cadre of mobile, career service physicians, who could be assigned as needed to the various Marine Hospitals.

The scope of activities of the Marine Hospital Service 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.

[9] Over the next half a century, the Marine Hospital Service increasingly took over quarantine functions from individual state authorities.

The Marine Hospital Service was assigned the responsibility for the medical inspection of arriving immigrants at sites such as Ellis Island in New York Harbor.

Commissioned officers played a major role in fulfilling the Service's commitment to prevent disease from entering the country.

Aside from merchant seamen, members of the military, immigrants, Native Americans, other federal beneficiaries, and people affected by chronic and epidemic diseases found a source for health care in the MHS and its hospitals.

As long as ample federal funding was available for their construction, these hospitals were impressive examples of government-provided health care.

The hospitals of the early 20th century in major port cities such as New Orleans, San Francisco, and Savannah displayed ornate architectural detail and reflected many of the changes sweeping medicine at the time.

Flag of the Marine Hospital Service
Marine Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, built in 1833
The Marine Hospital, Staten Island, N.Y.
The Marine Hospital, Staten Island, N.Y. In 1887, the National Institute of Health began as a single room Laboratory of Hygiene for bacteriological investigation established by the U.S. Marine Hospital Service at Stapleton, Staten Island, New York . From 1887 to 1891, the hygienic laboratory was located in the attic of the Marine Hospital on Staten Island.
U.S. Marine Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky (c.1909)
Flag of the U.S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service
Lazaretto (pesthouse) for the Columbia River Quarantine Station, Knappton Cove, Washington, built 1912