Rupert Blue

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Rupert Blue
4th Surgeon General of the United States
In office January 13, 1912 – March 3, 1920
President	William Howard Taft Woodrow Wilson
Preceded by	Walter Wyman
Succeeded by	Hugh S. Cumming
Personal details
Born	(1868-05-30)May 30, 1868 Richmond County, North Carolina, USA
Died	April 12, 1948(1948-04-12) (aged 79) Charleston, South Carolina, USA

Rupert Lee Blue (May 30, 1868 – April 12, 1948) was an American physician and soldier. He was the fourth Surgeon General of the United States from 1912 to 1920. He served as president of the American Medical Association in 1916–17.

Biography

Early years

Rupert Blue was born in

Blue spent his early years in the MHS at the front lines of turn-of-the-century public health, participating in the medical inspection of immigrants of the United States and battling outbreaks of epidemic disease. Then-Surgeon General Walter Wyman dispatched Blue twice to oversee rat eradication and urban sanitation programs after bubonic plague struck San Francisco, once in February 1903 during the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904, and again in August 1907 during a second series which followed the 1906 earthquake and fires.

During his initial deployment Blue acted as a middleman reporting back to Wyman concerning the political climate surrounding San Francisco.^[1] The majority of Blue's work consisted of acting as a mediator between the various branches of government who at the time were conflicted on their opinions of whether or not the bubonic plague was actually present in San Francisco.^[1] Upon arriving Blue was able to organize a conference between the federal, state, civil and business leaders of the area to discuss the sanitation conditions in Chinatown, where the majority of plague cases were aggregated within the city.^[1]

Blue's primary concern was to secure funding to improve the sanitation conditions of Chinatown through the implementation and maintenance of sanitation measures.^[1] These proposed measures consisted of vermin eradication, growing scientific evidence pointed to rats as carriers of the plague, and creating physical barriers between rats and humans through cementation of basement floors and walls.^[1]

This initial conference, organized by Blue, ended with the adaptation of a binding resolution that prioritized funding for sanitation campaigns throughout San Francisco until the city was declared plague free.^[1] This was the first time all levels of government had been able to put political differences aside and agree on a direction together.^[1] These conference meetings continued to occur on a biweekly notice, and eventually led to the creation of the Public Health Commission of California with Blue as its inaugural president in April 1903.^[1]

Funding for these sanitation campaigns lasted from 1903 through 1905 at which time San Francisco was declared plague free due to a decrease in mortality rate within Chinatown and the lack of any new cases reported to officials.^[1] The success of these sanitation programs were credited to Blue for his diplomacy skills among the different levels of government.^[1] With the implementation of these programs Blue was able to stem the plague and enable Wyman to avoid imposing a federal quarantine on the bay area.^[1]

In April 1905, with pressure from the municipal government of San Francisco and no new cases, Blue succeeded his position as head of the United States Public Health Service in San Francisco (after being appointed in May 1903) to Donald Currie before heading off to his next post.^[1]

When he wasn't trapping rats and squirrels in California, Blue directed

• Dr.
  bacterial
  origins.
• Dr.
  hookworm disease
  , and its positive correlation with insanitary soil conditions, throughout the Southeast.
• Dr. Joseph Goldberger used field studies at Spartanburg, South Carolina and at the Greenfield prison farm to uncover the nutritional deficiencies at the root of pellagra (1914–1915).^{[citation needed]}
• Dr. Leslie Lumsden reduced the prevalence of typhoid fever through rural privy-building campaigns and spurred the establishment of the first full-time county health department, at Yakima, Washington (1911).
• Dr. John McMullan brought his knowledge of trachoma treatment and prevention from work with immigrants to public health campaigns among American Indians and rural populations in the Ozarks and Southern Appalachian mountains, setting up the first of his temporary hospitals at Hindman, Kentucky (1913).

World War I

After the United States officially entered

During World War I, under SG Rupert Blue, cigarettes were issued as part of each fighting man's basic field rations kit.^[3]

Recruiting and retaining physicians during wartime was a challenge to PHS, a situation made worse by the global Spanish influenza pandemic that reached the United States in September 1918. Blue had applauded President Wilson's Executive Order making PHS an arm of the military (issued in April 1917 and repealed in 1921), and subsequent moves to set officers’ pay and benefits on a par with those of the armed forces, but did not see passage of legislation creating a PHS Reserve Corps until October 1918, well into the flu pandemic. Pressure to add staff also came from Congress' mandate (1917) that PHS provide health services for disabled and, as of March 1919, all World War One veterans, through a new Bureau of War Risk Insurance in the Treasury Department. Over the following year, PHS assembled a network of fourteen district offices and transformed war surplus facilities into hospitals and clinics, scrambling for staff and resources to stretch the $10.5 million given by Congress to fund the new program.

Given his tenure during this period, it may not come as a surprise that Blue advocated enacting national health insurance, then known as universal sickness insurance, as part of an overall Federal public health strategy. Blue spoke not only as Surgeon General and on behalf of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers but also as President of the American Medical Association (1916–17).

A change in leadership at the Department of the Treasury, PHS' home, may have led to Blue's decision to step down from his posting as Surgeon General on 9 March 1920. He resumed the rank of Assistant Surgeon General and was assigned to Paris, France, to oversee PHS operations in Europe and to serve as U.S. delegate to the

After a full career at PHS, Blue retired from PHS on 1 December 1932. He was advanced to the rank of Vice Admiral in 1942. He died on 12 April 1948, in Charleston, South Carolina.

References

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