made their living associated with seagoing. The marine hospital fund was administered by the Treasury Department and financed through a monthly deduction from the wages of the seamen. Medical care was provided through contracts with existing hospitals and, increasingly as time went on, through the construction of new hospitals for this purpose. The earliest marine hospitals were located along the East Coast of the United States, with Boston being the site of the first such facility, but later they were also established along inland waterways, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf Coast and Pacific Coast. The marine hospitals hardly constituted a system in the Antebellum period. Funds for the hospitals were inadequate, political rather than medical reasons often influenced the choice of sites for hospitals and the selection of physicians, and the Treasury Department had little supervisory authority over the hospitals. During the Civil War, the Union and Confederate forces occupied the hospitals for their own use, and in 1864 only 8 of the 27 hospitals listed before the war were operational. In 1869, the United States Secretary of the Treasury commissioned an extensive study of the marine hospitals, and the resulting critical report led to the passage of reform legislation in the following year. The 1870 reorganization converted the loose network of locally controlled hospitals into a centrally controlled Marine Hospital Service, with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The position of Supervising Surgeon (later Surgeon General) was created to administer the Service. Woodworth began his service in the position on March 29, 1871, and he moved quickly to reform the system. He adopted a military model for his medical staff, instituting examinations for applicants instead of appointing physicians on the recommendation of the local Collector of Customs. Physicians, whom Woodworth placed in uniforms, were no longer appointed to serve in a particular facility, but appointed to the general Service. In this way, Woodworth created a cadre of mobile, career service physicians who could be assigned and moved as needed to the various marine hospitals. The uniformed services component of the Marine Hospital Service was formalized as the Commissioned Corps by legislation enacted in 1889 under Woodworth's successor, John B. Hamilton. In 1872, Woodworth initiated the publication of annual reports of the Marine Hospital Service. That same year he also served as one of the founders of the American Public Health Association. From the time of his appointment, Woodworth envisioned