\"1st Surgeon General\" John Maynard Woodworth Clipped Signature COA For Sale

Up for sale a RARE! \"1st Surgeon General\" John Maynard Woodworth Clipped Signature.This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs andcomes with their Certificate of Authenticity.

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John Maynard Woodworth(August15, 1837 – March 14, 1879) was an American physician and member of theWoodworth political family.He served as the first Supervising-Surgeon General under U.S. presidentUlysses S. Grant, then changed toSurgeonGeneral of the United States Marine Hospital Servicefrom 1871to 1879. Woodworth was born atBig Flats,Chemung County,New York. His family soon moved toIllinois, where Woodworth attended school inWarrenville. Hestudiedpharmacyat theUniversity of Chicagoandworked as apharmacistfor a time. Woodworth wasone of the organizers of theChicago Academy of Scienceand in 1858 became curator ofits museum. In this capacity, he made several trips west of theMississippi Riverto collect natural history specimens.He was appointed naturalist by theUniversity of Chicagoin1859 and asked to establish a museum ofnatural history. Woodworth also spent time working attheSmithsonian Institutionoverthe next few years. He then decided to embark on medical studies, and graduatedfrom theChicago Medical Collegein1862. Almost immediately upon graduating from medical school, Woodworth wasappointed Assistant Surgeon in theUnion Army. He was soon promoted toSurgeonand eventually became Medical Director oftheArmy of the Tennessee.Woodworth served under GeneralWilliam Tecumseh Sherman,and on \"Sherman\'s March to the Sea\"he was in charge of the ambulance train, bringing the sick and wounded toSavannahwithout the loss of a single man. After the war,Woodworth became a companion of the Pennsylvania Commandery of theMilitary Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. FollowingtheCivil War, Woodworth spenta year inEurope, receiving clinical instruction chiefly in thehospitals ofBerlinandVienna. In 1866, he became demonstrator in anatomy attheChicago Medical College.He was also appointed Surgeon of the Soldier\'s home ofChicagoand Sanitary Inspector of theChicago Board of Healthinthat same year. In 1871, Woodworth was appointed the first Supervising Surgeonof theMarine Hospital Service.The Service had its origins in a 1798Act of Congress\"for the relief of sick and disabled seamen.\"The1798 law created a fund to be used by theFederalGovernment of the United Statesto provide medical servicestomerchant seameninAmerican ports, which was expanded to include military and others who madetheir living associated with seagoing. The marine hospital fund wasadministered by theTreasuryDepartmentand financed through a monthly deduction from thewages of the seamen. Medical care was provided through contracts with existinghospitals and, increasingly as time went on, through the construction of newhospitals for this purpose. The earliest marine hospitals were located alongtheEast Coast of the UnitedStates, withBostonbeing the site of the firstsuch facility, but later they were also established along inland waterways,theGreat Lakes, and theGulf CoastandPacific Coast. The marine hospitals hardly constituted asystem in theAntebellum period. Fundsfor the hospitals were inadequate, political rather than medical reasons ofteninfluenced the choice of sites for hospitals and the selection of physicians,and the Treasury Department had little supervisory authority over thehospitals. During the Civil War, theUnionandConfederateforcesoccupied the hospitals for their own use, and in 1864 only 8 of the 27hospitals listed before the war were operational. In 1869, theUnitedStates Secretary of the Treasurycommissioned an extensivestudy of the marine hospitals, and the resulting critical report led to thepassage of reform legislation in the following year. The 1870 reorganizationconverted the loose network of locally controlled hospitals into a centrallycontrolledMarine Hospital Service,with its headquarters inWashington, D.C.. The position of Supervising Surgeon(laterSurgeonGeneral) was created to administer the Service. Woodworth began hisservice in the position on March 29, 1871, and he moved quickly to reform thesystem. He adopted a military model for his medical staff, institutingexaminations for applicants instead of appointing physicians on therecommendation of the localCollector ofCustoms. Physicians, whom Woodworth placed in uniforms, were nolonger appointed to serve in a particular facility, but appointed to thegeneral Service. In this way, Woodworth created a cadre of mobile, careerservice physicians who could be assigned and moved as needed to the variousmarine hospitals. The uniformed services component of the Marine HospitalService was formalized as theCommissioned Corpsby legislation enacted in 1889 underWoodworth\'s successor,John B. Hamilton. In 1872, Woodworth initiated the publicationof annual reports of the Marine Hospital Service. That same year he also servedas one of the founders of theAmerican Public HealthAssociation. From the time of his appointment, Woodworth envisionedbroader responsibilities for the Marine Hospital Service, well beyond the careof merchant seamen. In 1873, his title was changed to Supervising SurgeonGeneral. He issued publications oncholeraandyellow fever, and laid the foundations for the passage oftheNational Quarantine Act of 1878. This Act conferredquarantineauthority on the Marine Hospital Service,initiating a process whereby over the next half a century the Serviceprogressively took over quarantine functions from the states. The Act alsoauthorized the publication ofBulletins of the PublicHealth(the forerunner of the Service\'s journalPublic Health Reports).The Marine Hospital Service thus moved into public health activities underWoodworth, paving the way for its later evolution into thePublicHealth Service. Woodworth also designed the seal of the Service,which he first used on a publication that he authored in 1874 onNomenclatureof Diseases. The seal consisted of a fouled anchor, to represent theseamen cared for by the Service, and thecaduceusofMercury. The latter symbol was particularly appropriate since it served as asymbol of commerce (which could represent the merchant marine) but was alsoused by theArmy Medical Corpsasits symbol. With minor changes in design, this device has remained the seal ofthe Public Health Service to the present day. Woodworth remained in theposition of Supervising Surgeon General until his death in Washington, DC, on14 March 1879.