ABSTRACT
The precursor to public-health departments, the Marine Hospital Service, established in 1798, provided medical services to merchant seamen in American ports. Financed by a monthly deduction from the wages of seamen, medical care was provided by contracts with existing hospitals. In 1862, President Lincoln created the Bureau of Chemistry, later to become the Food and Drug Administration. In 1866, New York City set up a Board of Health. In 1887, the National Institutes of Health opened a one-room laboratory on Staten Island to research the causes of disease. Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 to monitor the quality of foods and the safety of medicine, and in 1912, at Theodore Roosevelt’s urging, it created the Children’s Bureau to protect the health and welfare of children and prevent their being exploited in the workplace. In 1912, the Public Health Service was established; Figure 7.1 shows one of its nurses teaching a mother how to prepare a feeding formula for her infant in 1920. In 1935, Congress passed the Social Security Act. The Communicable Disease Center, later the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, was created in 1946. In 1962, Congress passed the Migrant Health Act to afford health care to agricultural workers. The Surgeon General’s 1964 report on smoking led to a substantial decrease in the incidence of smoking, and in 1965, clearly a watershed year for public health, Congress created four seminal public-health programs:
Medicare: Health care for the elderly.
Medicaid: Health care for the low-income and disabled citizens.
Older Americans Act: Nutritional and social assistance to the elderly.
Head Start: Nutritional and educational assistance to needy children.
