It may be of interest to many persons in the interior of our country,
who are not brought in contact with water transportation, or even with
river boats of any kind, to know what is meant by the “Marine Hospital
Service,” which has existed from our earliest days as a nation, and
yet has nothing in common with the Revenue Marine, or with the Naval
Service. The Naval Service has its own hospitals, and the Revenue
Marine make arrangements for their sick and wounded at proper places.
The Marine Hospital Service provides for all sick men who follow the
water in the merchant service, whether they are salt water or fresh
water men, whether they are on a Mississippi steamboat, or on a vessel
just arrived from a China voyage. Its authority, under the law, dates
from the year 1798, but it also provided that a tax of twenty cents a
month should be exacted from every officer and seaman for the support
of hospitals. In the following year the same provision of tax was
made for the navy, and all officers and men have paid it for nearly a
hundred years; so that the Marine Hospitals and the Naval Hospitals
have never cost the nation anything, the money for their support having
come purely from this personal tax. Every merchant sailor pays that;
and every naval person, from an admiral to a messenger boy, has twenty
cents a month deducted from his pay for hospital service.
[Illustration: U. S. S. CHICAGO.
Protected cruiser. Twin screw. Main battery, four 8-inch, eight 6-inch
and two 5-inch breech loading rifles. Secondary battery, nine 6-pounder
and four 1-pounder rapid fire guns, two Hotchkiss revolving cannons and
two Gatlings. Protected steel deck, 1¹⁄₂ inches. 33 officers, 376 men.]
The Marine Hospital Service has of late years been more serviceable
than ever, especially in the prevention of the introduction of cholera
and of yellow fever into our country.
The organization is complete and excellent. There is a supervising
Surgeon-General, who has great powers and great responsibilities, a
medical purveyor, surgeons, passed-assistant surgeons, and assistant
surgeons. These treat an immense number of cases, and not a few have
lost their lives in combating epidemics. These officers are selected by
examination and entirely removed from any politics, and are bound to go
wherever they are ordered, and obey regulations.