The Marine Hospital Service which was founded in July 16, 1798 upon the signing of the “Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen”. The “National Quarantine Act of 1878 conferred quarantine authority on the Marine Hospital Service”, slowly taking over authority from States.  In 1902 it was renamed the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service because of its broadening responsibilities such as managing immigration. [2, 3, 4]  In 1878 the PHS began publishing weekly Public Health Reports.

“The uniformed services component of the Marine Hospital Service was formalized as the Commissioned Corps by legislation enacted in 1889. At first open only to physicians, over the course of the twentieth century, the Corps expanded to include dentists, sanitary engineers, pharmacists, nurses, sanitarians, scientists, and other health professionals.”  The Commissioned Corps of the US Public Health Service, led by the Surgeon General, all wear uniforms, bearing military ranking.  They are considered one of the nation’s seven uniform services. [10]

On August 14, 1912 [7] the legislative powers of the service were broadened, now “authorizing investigations into human diseases (such as tuberculosis, hookworm, malaria, and leprosy), sanitation, water supplies, and sewage disposal” and was renamed the Public Health Service (PHS). All types of illness, regardless of their cause, now fell under the control of the PHS. [1, 6, 11]

Between 1912-1920 Rupert Blue [12] was the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service.  He was in command of 180 health officers and 44 quarantine stations throughout the country.  After the epidemic was over Blue called for a more “centralized national department of health with powers far greater than the U.S.P.H.S. had ever had before…” [5]

In the 1918 pandemic, “the Public Health Service was dominated by the Commissioned Corps, a mobile cadre of uniformed and ranked medical professionals….In the late nineteenth century, physicians flocked to join the PHS because it offered job stability and a regular paycheck.”  According to the CDC “The 1918 influenza pandemic occurred too rapidly for the PHS to develop a detailed study of the pandemic.”

The PHS actively “researched diseases and their causes at the Hygienic Laboratory, the precursor to the National Institutes of Health…Having found vaccines for typhus, typhoid and a range of other diseases, scientists in and outside of the PHS were optimistic about their abilities to control and cure diseases in the future” with more vaccines!

“In 1936 Surgeon General Thomas Parran [formally the New York State Commissioner for Health under Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt led the fight against venereal disease and paved the way for modern public health organization”, a plan requested by Franklin D. Roosevelt.  In 1939 Parran succeeded in transferring the PHS from its original home in the Treasury Department to the Federal Security Agency.

President Roosevelt signed the Public Health Service Act of 1943, into law on November 11, 1943, it was updated in July 5, 1944. [13, 14].

Parran “strengthen and extended the research programs at the National Institute of Health, established the Communicable Disease Center (now Center for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC) and participated in the planning of the World Health Organization. With the approach of the second world war, the programs of the PHS began to emphasize on military preparedness. In 1941 when the U.S Coast Guard was militarized, the PHS went to war as well. …The war had an enormous impact on the PHS. Not only did the war require expansion of its programs and personnel”, but expansion of the Public Health Services Act. [8, 9]

The American Medical Association (AMA) was a “key constituency for the PHS”.

USPHS are represented in every United States agency, not just health.