page_title: Marine Hospital Service
section_title: Increasing scope
hierarchical_section_title: Marine Hospital Service / History / Increasing scope
caption_attribution_description: English: Postcard view of United States Marine Hospital, Louisville, Kentucky
context_page_description: The Marine Hospital Service was an organization of Marine Hospitals dedicated to the care of ill and disabled seamen in the United States Merchant Marine, the U.S. Coast Guard and other federal beneficiaries. The Marine Hospital Service evolved into the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
  It was the point of origin for the Public Health Service and the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps of the present-day Department of Health and Human Services, and current Operating Divisions and Staffing Divisions that include the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Indian Health Service, and a host of other federal-level health programs.
context_section_description: 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.  Starting in the mid-14th century, ships entering harbors were quarantined when any of the crew was sick. This practice was normal procedure at United States harbors, with quarantine originally a function of the individual states, rather than of the Federal Government. The National Quarantine Act of 1878 vested quarantine authority to the Marine Hospital Service. and the National Board of Health.  The National Board was not reauthorized by Congress in 1883 and its powers reverted to the Marine Hospital Service.  Over the next half a century, the Marine Hospital Service increasingly took over quarantine functions from individual state authorities.
  The Marine Hospitals, as their name suggests, were hospitals constructed at key sea and river ports across the nation to provide health care for merchant marine sailors. Aside from the well-being of these sailors, the hospitals provided a key monitoring and gate-keeping function against pathogenic diseases.  As immigration increased dramatically in the late 19th century, the Federal Government also took over the processing of immigrants from the individual states, beginning in 1891.  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.
  As the nation grew, the scope of Marine Hospital Service's scope of duties grew to include domestic and foreign quarantine and other national public health functions.  Over time, the hospitals of the service were also expanded to include research and prevention work as well as the care of patients. 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 PHS and its hospitals.
caption: U.S. Marine Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky (c.1909). It is currently under renovation.
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