Fighting smallpox on the Texas border: an episode from PHS's proud past

The motto of the Public Health Service (PHS) is "Service with Distinction." An example of how that motto was earned can be seen in the work of the professionals of the Marine Hospital Service (as PHS was then known) in a smallpox epidemic on the Texas border in 1895. Barely 2 years after Congress had given the U.S. Surgeon General the authority to intervene and prevent the spread of contagious diseases from one State to another, Surgeon General Walter Wyman, MD, stepped in. In response to a request from the Texas State Health Officer, Wyman sent a team of officers to assist the State and prevent the spread of smallpox. At that time the Surgeon General was head of the Marine Hospital Service, which became the Public Health Service in 1912. In a period of slightly more than 2 months, the epidemic was contained in the population of 411 refugees. Sixty people had died at the camp, 51 from smallpox. Although that fatality rate would be incredibly high by current standards, it was low under the circumstances. Milton Rosenau, MD, was a key to the containment of the disease and the humanitarian treatment of the survivors, a group of black Americans who had fled from Mexico after having been lured there with the promise of land that would be their own. Rosenau would later become the head of the Hygienic Laboratory, precursor of the National Institutes of Health.