Medical Service Corps Birthday
4 AUGUST 1947
MEDICAL SERVICE CORPS BIRTHDAY
The number and variety of casualties Navy Medicine faced in the early years demonstrated the need for a cadre of competent medical professionals such as pharmacists, therapists, medical researchers, and the like. By WWII these professionals had been splintered into a confusing system of varied individual corps, each campaigning for seniority, and each forced to compete against the others for funding. Thus by 1947 there was considerable attention given to the potential efficiencies to be gained by allying these small individual corps.
On 20 February 1947 the Army Surgeon General succeeded in introducing House Resolution 1982, a bill proposing to unite the Army’s Pharmacy Corps, Sanitary Corps, and Allied Sciences Corps. At that moment Congress was already considering two Navy bills, H.R. 1603, a proposal to unite all the Navy’s allied medical scientists into the “Associated Sciences Corps,” and a second bill to restructure the Navy’s Hospital Corps. When Congress discovered that both military branches were independently seeking similar goals, it was recommended that a joint bill be drafted.
Some minor differences had to be worked out between the separate proposals of the Army and Navy, not the least of which was the need to clarify the Navy’s use of the term “pharmacist.” The title was then the name for the senior Hospital Corpsman ratings–“Chief Pharmacist,” “Senior Chief Pharmacist,” etc. The result was H.R. 3215, a bill to revise the Medical Departments of both the Army and Navy. Under Title II of this legislation the Navy followed the Army’s lead by incorporating allied health professionals into a single Medical Service Corps that was subdivided into Pharmacy, Medical Allied Sciences, Supply and Administration and Optometry Sections. All previously existing separate ancillary science corps were abolished. Under Title III of the bill the existing Navy enlisted rates of “Hospital Apprentice,” “Pharmacist Mate” and “Chief Pharmacist” were replaced with our present system of “Hospitalmen” rates. The legislation also set the strength of this new Medical Service Corps at 4% of the manning of the Navy’s Hospital Corps. (Title III fixed the Hospital Corps manning at 3 1/2% of the total enlisted Navy and Marine forces). The senior rank authorized for the new Corps was O-6, and the number of MSC Captains was fixed at 2% of MSC manning. A further clause barred Medical Service Corps officers from line command.
The resolution passed the House on 2 June and the Senate on 7 July. On this day Public Law 80-337, the “Army-Navy Medical Services Corps Act of 1947,” was signed into law.
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CAPT James Bloom
Rehabilitation Medicine
Costello, Edward L. History of the Medical Services Corps (Chap VIII). Draft copy prepared for the Office of the Army Surgeon General, 1970.
Gray, David P. Many Specialties, One Corps: A Pictorial History of the U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps. Virginia Beach, VA: The Donning Co., 1997, pp. 17-70.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: This same year saw another foundational change in the organization of the American military. A month later on September 18th the 80th Congress passed the National Security Act of 1947 which split the Army Air Corps out as a separate branch (the US Air Force) and united all three branches under the newly coined “Department of Defense.” James V. Forrestal, who had been Secretary of the Navy, was appointed as the first Secretary of Defense on September 23rd (replacing the former Secretary of War).