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Mike Mitka

JAMA. 1998;280:592.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

JULY 16 marked the 200th anniversary of the founding of the US Public Health Service.

The service began as the Marine Hospital Service under the Treasury Department and was part of the 5th Congress's attempt in 1798 to encourage expansion of the country's small merchant marine and to protect its ill and injured seamen. The seamen were to contribute 20 cents a month to finance the hospitals. The first temporary hospital began operations the next year, in 1799, in rehabilitated barracks in Boston harbor.

The marine hospital in New Orleans, La, as it appeared in the mid19th century. (Photo credit: National Library of Medicine)

The marine hospitals sprang up along the East Coast and then followed inland waterways as the nation expanded westward. During the Civil War the hospitals cared for both northerners and southerners.

Public Health Service physicians examine arriving immigrants at Ellis Island in 1907. (Photo . . . [Full Text of this Article]