John B. Hamilton

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John B. Hamilton
Preceded byJohn Maynard Woodworth
Succeeded byWalter Wyman
Personal details
Born(1847-12-01)December 1, 1847
Otter Creek Township, Jersey County, Illinois, US
DiedDecember 24, 1898(1898-12-24) (aged 51)
Elgin, Illinois, US
Signature

John Brown Hamilton (December 1, 1847 – December 24, 1898) was an American physician and soldier. He was appointed the second Surgeon General of the United States from 1879 to 1891.

Biography

Early years

Hamilton was born on at Otter Creek Township, Jersey County, Illinois, near the present town of Otterville. He was educated at the Hamilton School, operated by his family, and apprenticed at age 16 to physician Joseph O. Hamilton. The following year (1864), Hamilton enlisted in G Company, 61st Illinois Regiment, of which his father, Reverend Benjamin B. Hamilton, was chaplain. After the close of the Civil War, he attended Rush Medical College in Chicago (1869, MD) and entered private practice.

Career

Marine Hospital Service (MHS)

Hamilton's wartime experiences exerted their influence, drawing him from private medical practice into a commission as an Assistant

infectious disease
among patients. Hamilton resolved the crisis successfully by directing a renovation of the facility's drainage and sewage systems.

Surgeon General

On April 3, 1879, Hamilton was appointed Supervising Surgeon General, succeeding fellow Army veteran and Chicagoan Dr. John Woodworth, the first Supervising Surgeon. Woodworth had died in office, amidst a political battle with the fledgling American Public Health Association and its allies in the United States Congress over the possibility that a new National Board of Health would supersede the newly revamped MHS (1871).

That MHS outlived the National Board of Health and emerged in the 1890s reinvigorated is a testament to Hamilton's skills as a political negotiator as well as a bureaucrat. Under his tenure, MHS gained authorities to establish a national quarantine on sea and land (interstate), formal recognition of merit-based requirements for a Commissioned Corps of medical officers, and a new laboratory devoted to bacteriology, the newest public health science of the day.

Development of quarantine policy

Two national epidemics framed Hamilton's tenure: the

Asiatic cholera epidemic of 1892, which hit New York City with particular ferocity. Sanitary cordons, or quarantine
, were the primary response to yellow fever, to block the progress of disease believed to be conveyed not only on boats and foot traffic but also now by railroad. Instituting quarantines, however, meant Federal intervention into what was widely held to be state police powers and met resistance in the southeastern United States where the issue of yellow fever, and its impact on trade, were most critical.

Advocates of a National Board of Health, including Army Surgeon

).

The Board distributed grants-in-aid to state and territorial health departments for what were called "inland quarantines" but had a mixed record in regulating the uses to which grants were put and made political enemies when it attempted to quell yellow fever by means of a quarantine station on Ship Island, near New Orleans.

While the Board struggled with clumsy administrative mechanisms, Hamilton demonstrated how MHS's relationships with customs inspectors and the Revenue Cutter Service enabled a quick and effective quarantine response to

$100,000 fund for investigating epidemics, monies that had been slated for the Board. When Billings and his colleagues attempted to revive the idea of a National Board as a new Bureau of Health within the Department of the Interior, Hamilton announced that during August 1887 MHS had established a Hygienic Laboratory (predecessor to the National Institutes of Health), where Dr. Joseph J. Kinyoun
and his staff were applying the new science of bacteriology to examine cholera. In the end, the National Board of Health lost both funding and support from Congress, which gave the Board's enlarged authorities, and its quarantine stations, to MHS.

Issues surrounding the practice of quarantine drove Hamilton's work in public health. It was no coincidence that the Hygienic Laboratory began in an attic at

Sandy Hook
(Camp Low).

Administrative reforms

Hamilton made limited progress with the Congress realizing Woodworth's reform plans to set MHS on sound fiscal and professional moorings. The Shipping Act of June 26, 1884 replaced the hospital tax charged to

merchant seamen in favor of financing health services by means of a tonnage tax
on foreign ships landing in domestic ports, supplemented by deficiency appropriations. And after Hamilton issued regulations specifying competitive examinations for entrance into a corps of medical officers, the Congress formally authorized the Commissioned Corps with the Act of January 4, 1889.

He was not able, however, to win an equal footing for MHS's Commissioned Corps with the salaries and ranks accorded to military medical officers and as a result, resigned his post as Surgeon General on June 1, 1891.

Personal life

Hamilton was a cousin of the painter

Journal of the American Medical Association
(1893–1898).

Hamilton was a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States by right of his father's service as a chaplain in the Civil War. He originally joined the Order as a companion of the second class, a status reserved for the eldest sons of veteran companions of the Order and succeeded his father as a companion of the first class upon his father's death.

Rather than accept an assignment to San Francisco, Hamilton resigned from MHS on November 13, 1896, and accepted the position of Superintendent of the

Northern Illinois State Hospital for the Insane in Elgin, Illinois. He would end his days at the hospital, dying there on December 24, 1898.[5]

References

  1. ^ "Jun 17, 1920, page 19 - Times Herald at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved November 12, 2024.
  2. ^ "Jun 17, 1920, page 19 - Times Herald at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved November 12, 2024.
  3. ^ "Mar 20, 1970, page 31 - El Paso Times at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved November 12, 2024.
  4. ^ "Mar 23, 1944, page 6 - El Paso Herald-Post at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved November 12, 2024.
  5. .