On Mar. 29, 1871, John Maynard Woodworth was appointed U.S. Surgeon General, and he moved quickly to reform the system. He adopted a military model for his medical staff, instituting examinations for applicants instead of appointing physicians on the recommendation of the local Collector of Customs.

Physicians, whom Woodworth placed in uniforms, were no longer appointed to serve in a particular facility, but appointed to the general Service. In this way, Woodworth created a cadre of mobile, career service physicians who could be assigned and moved as needed to the various marine hospitals. The uniformed services component of the Marine Hospital Service was formalized as the Commissioned Corps by legislation enacted in 1889 under Woodworth’s successor, John B. Hamilton.

The Service had its origins in a 1798 Act of Congress “for the relief of sick and disabled seamen.” The 1798 law created a fund to be used by the Federal Government to provide medical services to merchant seamen in American ports.

The Surgeon General of the U.S. is the “nation’s doctor.” It was a very different job, however, when Dr. John Maynard Woodworth was appointed the first Supervising Surgeon of the Marine Hospital Service. The previous year, the U.S. Congress had established the service to replace the informal network of hospitals for sick and disabled seamen that was originally enacted in 1789.

From the time of his appointment, Woodworth envisioned broader responsibilities Marine Hospital Service, well beyond the care of merchant seamen. In 1873, his title was changed to Supervising Surgeon General. He issued publications on cholera and yellow fever, and laid the foundations for the passage of the National Quarantine Act of 1878. This Act conferred quarantine authority on the Marine Hospital Service, initiating a process whereby over the next half a century the Service progressively took over quarantine functions from the States.

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