On Nov. 13, 1912, President William Howard Taft nominated Rupert Blue as U.S. Surgeon General after the unexpected death of Walter Wyman. Surgeon General Blue the plague fighter became an institution builder as well. He inherited the Act of 1912, which reoriented PHS toward research and public campaigns against disease.

Passage of the Act of 1912 capped 6 years of lively debate about how to strengthen Federal public health efforts more generally. It designated the Treasury Department’s Marine Hospital and Public Health Service, rather than the Department of the Interior, as the lead Federal agency (and shortened the name to PHS), responsible not only for interstate quarantine and health services delivery to Federal wards but also for the health of the general public.

The Act stepped up Federal public health activities, most notably in response to repeated outbreaks of typhoid fever that tore through cities and towns that drew drinking water from increasingly contaminated supplies.