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 Richmond County, North Carolina, and raised in Marion, South Carolina. He attended the University of Virginia (1889–1890) and earned his M.D. from the University of Maryland (1892). His first association with the Public Health Service (PHS), then known as the Marine Hospital Service (MHS), came through a nine-month internship (1 June 1892 to 2 March 1893), after which Blue applied for entrance into the MHS Regular Corps and was commissioned as an Assistant Surgeon on 3 March 1893. Career 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. 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. 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. Blue's primary concern was to secure funding to improve the sanitation conditions of Chinatown through the implementation and maintenance of sanitation measures. 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. 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. This was the first time all levels of government