As the Lazzaroni recognized when they successfully convinced Congress and President Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, to establish the National Academy, science was generally a high-value proposition for military interests within the federal government. But as the Gilded Age unfolded, the cozy relationship between science and the military slowly began to fray, at least in the minds of many members of Congress.

In fact, on Capitol Hill, those tensions were nothing new, as a flashback to 1825 reveals. That year, John Quincy Adams became the sixth president of the United States, having been chosen by the House of Representatives following an election in which no candidate received a majority of Electoral College votes. JQA, as he was known, was not just a successful politician from Massachusetts, he was also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the holder of the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard, and a renowned statesman.

In his first annual address¹ to Congress on December 6, 1825, Adams made two requests related to science. First, he argued for federal support for university research on “weights and measures,” a subject that had a strong Constitutional connection through Article I, Section 8. Second, he proposed an astronomical observatory—for which there was no direct Constitutional mandate—making his case with the following words:

The response to both proposals was tepid, although 2 years after Adams lost his 1828 reelection bid to Andrew Jackson, Secretary of the Treasury, Samuel D. Ingraham, at the request of the Senate, authorized an activity within his department that would eventually become the Bureau of Weights and Measures.² That same year, 1830, Congress established the Depot of Charts and Instruments under the auspices of the Navy.³ But it wouldn’t be until 1844, with Adams by then occupying a seat in the House of Representatives,⁴ that Congress finally acquiesced and expanded the Depot’s responsibilities to include astronomy when it consolidated a number of maritime military research activities within a new institution, The Naval Observatory.

The Survey of the Coast,⁵ sometimes called the first federal science agency, followed a similar, perhaps even more fraught, congressional trajectory. At the request of Thomas Jefferson in 1807, Congress approved the project, tasking the Treasury Department with its management. But lack of adequate equipment, and the outbreak of the War of 1812, caused it to remain in a state of suspended animation until 1816. By that time, Jefferson had left office, and James Madison was already completing his second term. More significantly, Congress had begun to examine whether the Army and the Navy were better equipped to carry out the project more efficiently, faster, and at far lower cost as part of their routine charting activities.

In 1818, a little more than a year after the Survey had finally begun to make measurements, Congress reached its decision: the superintendent of the project, Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler,⁶ one of the world’s leading meteorologists, an émigré from Switzerland and, by many reports, something of a character, would need to find another job. The Survey of the Coast was now in the hands of the Navy, with civilians prohibited from participating. It remained that way until 1832, when Congress decided to revisit the issue under pressure from maritime enterprises. It had become increasingly clear that the Navy had botched the task. Whatever little it had generated in the way of charts were deemed almost worthless.⁷ The Survey had suffered terribly, and so, too, had Hassler, whose life, both personal as well as professional, had nearly come undone.

Reversing itself and disregarding the strenuous objections of one of the members of the House of Representatives,⁸ Congress reestablished the project as the Coast Survey under the terms of the 1807 act. Turning the clock back completely, it named Hassler—who had spent the last 2 years leading the weights and measures activity in the Treasury Department—as the superintendent for the second time. Hassler was very eager to resume his work on the Survey, but not before he made two demands of Congress.

First, noting that commercial interests would be major beneficiaries of the project, Hassler argued that the Treasury Department should have responsibility for the Survey, as stipulated in the 1807 law, and that having the Navy and the Treasury Department share the responsibility would be unwieldly and unproductive.

Second, Hassler argued that the techniques and instruments he would bring to bear on the Survey would have scientific impacts well beyond the development of charts and maps. Therefore, he proposed that an oversight board should consist solely of scientists with appropriate expertise and training.

In effect, Hassler was making the case for a scientific project funded by the federal government under the control of scientists, rather than bureaucrats, politicians, or the military, even if the military had a dog in the fight. It was an argument scientists would continue to make over the course of many decades.

Hassler got most of what he demanded of Congress in 1832, but the link between science and the military continued to be the subject of debate. Matters came to a head 9 years later when a “select” congressional committee began to examine whether the Survey’s spending was justified, and whether its productivity would be improved under Navy oversight. After considerable deliberation, the committee decided simply to shorten Hassler’s leash. Starting in 1843, the Survey would be required to clear all new plans with the White House, once its board—consisting of the superintendent (Hassler), his two senior assistants, two naval officers, and four engineers—had signed off. The decision was not what Hassler had pressed for, but the decision for him, turned out to be moot. He fell ill in the summer of 1843 and died the following November.

Alexander Bache, who later became one of the leaders of the Lazzaroni, and the first president of the National Academy of Sciences, assumed the reins of the Coast Survey, which he ran until his death in 1867. Bache was a much smoother operator than Hassler, and was able to keep congressional critics largely at bay by convincing them that the Survey was carrying out its work efficiently, competently, and with an eye toward saving money. As a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, he also had a good feel for the politics of the military, and succeeded in fending off the Navy’s continuing attempts to gain the upper hand.

Congress spent 7 years dithering over the weights and measures issue; two decades debating whether to authorize a Naval Observatory; and more than 35 years flip-flopping over military management of the Coast Survey. With hindsight, that fraught history should have been a warning to the Lazzaroni—especially Bache—and their aspirations for science in the post-Civil War era.

The bitter internecine conflict ended on May 9, 1865, leaving a death toll of 750,000 soldiers⁹—far more than the total number of American casualties in all other wars combined—and saddling the nation with a debt exceeding $2 billion. Faced by daunting financial needs for Reconstruction, Congress was fully prepared to put the Army and Navy on a diet. That was not good news for anyone trying to make the case for military stewardship of science.

The failure of the National Academy of Sciences to make any significant contribution to wartime technology certainly did not help the argument that science writ large was indispensable to the armed services. Nor did it help that Lincoln, who had been a strong science advocate, was assassinated less than a month before the war ended. And Vice President Andrew Johnson, who replaced him, was such a divisive figure¹⁰ that even if he had grabbed Lincoln’s science baton, it is doubtful he would have had much impact.

For American science and technology policy, the Gilded Age was one of profound transformation and disruption. The military not only shed its responsibilities in managing research and exploration programs, it also altered the curriculum and administration of its flagship training institution at West Point, New York. The United States Military Academy, as it is formally known, traces its origin to George Washington’s desire to establish a national military school focused on the art and science of war. Concerned about an elitist image such an institution might project, and the lack of any constitutional justification for establishing it in the first place, Congress ultimately settled simply on creating a “Corps of Artillerist and Engineers” at West Point.¹¹ The year was 1794.

After becoming president, Thomas Jefferson, who had been an earlier critic of Washington’s proposal, reversed course and began to press for the creation of a national university focused on science and engineering.¹² Congress adopted his plan, in part, and in 1802 Jefferson signed a bill establishing a “Corps of Engineers” at West Point that would “constitute a military academy.”¹³ As its first superintendent, Jefferson chose Jonathan Williams, a grand nephew of Benjamin Franklin, better known for his interest in science than for his minimal military service. But it is to Sylvanus Thayer, the “Father of West Point,” who became superintendent in 1817, that credit truly goes for making the Military Academy the center of engineering education in the United States. It remained so until the end of the Civil War.

The eponymous Gilded Age is best known for extreme wealth inequality and excesses of the privileged class, but it was also a period of ascendance for the liberal arts. At West Point, the cultural renaissance meant the end of a science and engineering emphasis. It also meant the transfer of control from the Corps of Engineers to the Secretary of War.

As the military departed from its perch atop the American science and engineering pyramid, science bureaus began to proliferate elsewhere in the federal government, and private institutions and individuals began to vie for a larger piece of the scientific action. At the time, no effective federal structures existed for managing competing interests, avoiding unnecessary duplication of activities, preventing political considerations from trumping scientific judgment, and ensuring that federal funds were being used wisely. The surveys of Western lands, which proliferated after the Civil War ended, illustrate the problems clearly.^14,15

Unless you’ve visited the “City of Gnomes,” located midway between South Fork and Gunnison deep in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, it is doubtful you’ve heard of George Wheeler. If you haven’t made a pit stop in Glenrock, Wyoming, off Interstate 25, you probably don’t know the name Ferdinand Hayden. And even if you’ve hiked through Kings Canyon National Park in California or boated on Lake Powell in northern Arizona and southern Utah, you probably have no idea who Clarence King and John Wesley Powell were, or why those popular tourist sites are named for them.

Wheeler, Hayden, King, and Powell all played major roles exploring the West during the early years of the Gilded Age. Their expeditions were not for cowards. Powell, for example, took on the Colorado River rapids, rafting six thousand feet below the rim of the Grand Canyon, never knowing what might be around the next bend, and whether he and his team would survive the challenge. His journal entry from August 13, 1869 captures that apprehensive mood:¹⁶

Wheeler, Hayden, and King’s adventures were no less fraught. Having met nature’s challenges with steely resolve, both they and Powell returned from their respective expeditions primed to challenge each other for preeminence in the public and scientific arenas. They wrangled over federal money, competed for dominance in the territories they explored, and vied for political favors. And they left their collective marks on agronomy, botany, cartography, ethnology, geography, geology, hydrology, minerology, mining, paleontology, and zoology.

But their back stabbing and incessant arguing over which government agency or department should have control over their surveys finally got to be too much for Congress to bear. Matters came to a head in 1878, the same year Joseph Henry died, after having led the National Academy of Sciences for two decades and the Smithsonian for more than three decades. He had been one of the more circumspect leaders of the Lazzaroni, and his cautious approach to science policy and politics had been his trademark during years of public service. He had held the Academy together in very trying times,¹⁷ but under his stewardship, it had become more a forum for scientific discussions among America’s most distinguished researchers and less an advisory organ to which government officials could turn.

Henry’s death was a great loss for American science, but it opened up the possibility that the National Academy might begin to play the advisory role that Alexander Bache and a number of its other founders had imagined. Enter Othniel Marsh, the renowned Yale paleontologist, who took over as the Academy’s interim president. He immediately made it clear that under his stewardship the Academy was open for advisory business.

The timing was fortuitous: Representative Abram Hewitt of New York was already looking for help in sorting out the survey controversies. Hewitt was a force to be reckoned with. He was a lawyer, an industrialist, and had been chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1876 and 1877. He would become mayor of New York City in 1887.

In short order, Hewitt used his position and power on the House Appropriations Committee to call for an Academy study of the entire mess, covering the activities of Wheeler, Hayden, King, and Powell, as well as the Coast and Geodetic Survey, as the Coast Survey was then known. It was the first time Congress had made a request of the Academy, and Marsh was intent upon getting it done right.¹⁸

Raymond Canning Cochrane, who has chronicled the first one hundred years of the Academy, describes the seminal report and its reception in Congress as follows:¹⁹

The last phrase proved to be more a matter of hope than reality.²⁰ The House of Representatives did seem poised to accept the Academy’s recommendations without any changes, but Hayden, who loathed the findings that stripped him of his survey authority, had other ideas. He found allies among Western members who took strong issue with the public lands provision, and he urged them to kill the bill. They did succeed in having the land language removed, but they fell short in derailing the balance of the legislation. Along the legislative trail, they left their mark on the Academy, accusing its members of passing judgment on an issue beyond the confines of science.

Hayden was not done. As the bill moved to the Senate, he continued his lobbying efforts, and seemingly succeeded, when the upper chamber voted not only to accept the House language that struck the land provisions, but also to discontinue all the surveys except Hayden’s. For the moment, it appeared that Hayden had won a significant victory, and that the Academy had come up short in its first attempt to be a major force in science policy.

Hayden was content, but in the House, Abram Hewitt, who had commissioned the Academy report, was not. As anyone familiar with the ways of Washington knows, the power of the purse reigns supreme. And as an appropriator, Hewitt held all the high cards. Without a doubt, he was less than thrilled with Hayden’s machinations, and he used his clout to commit the Senate amendments to the dust bin of history. Hewitt inserted language in the appropriations bill that discontinued Hayden’s survey, as well as Powell’s and Wheeler’s, and gave the Interior Department control of the Geological Survey, while keeping the Coast and Geodetic Survey in the Treasury Department. As for the public land provision, Hewitt, who was from New York, knew enough not to pick a fight he could not win, and left the issue out of the bill entirely.

Hayden had lost his very public battle, tarnishing his image in the process, but Powell and Wheeler, who now needed to find other work, were not so tainted. Powell returned to his home at the Smithsonian, and Wheeler contented himself with writing scientific papers, after receiving a promotion to the rank of captain in the Army Corps of Engineers. As for King, fortuitously, he had just about wrapped up his survey activities, and would have been primed for a new assignment, regardless of the congressional outcome. He got his chance shortly after President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the appropriations bill into law on March 3, 1879, becoming—with Powell’s backing—director of the newly created U.S. Geological Survey. It was not a match made in heaven, and King resigned 2 years later when James Garfield—who had been an ally of Hewitt’s in the House—became president. Garfield immediately named Powell director, and it is Powell who deserves credit for guiding the Survey from an extemporized origin into a permanent civilian science agency.

Congress had dealt with the difficulties the surveys had created, but concerns about science spending, proliferation of scientific bureaus, duplication of federally supported work, political favoritism, and allegations of corruption persisted. In 1884, Congress decided more needed to be done, and established a joint House-Senate commission under the chairmanship of Senator William B. Allison of Iowa.²¹ Intended initially to examine the organization of four federal activities—the Signal Service, the Geological Survey, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Navy’s Hydrographic Office—the commission’s work broadened substantially. It delved into whether the federal government should engage in or support research that does not have any demonstrable practical objective; whether Congress should have a direct voice in evaluating science projects; whether the federal government should establish a Department of Science to coordinate research activities; whether Congress or the president should have a science advisory committee; and whether the federal government more generally was spending too much money on scientific research.

The Allison commission held hearings and deliberated for a year and a half before issuing its recommendations. As the six-member committee began to organize itself, Theodore Lyman, a Massachusetts representative and the only member of the commission with scientific credentials, approached Othniel Marsh, then the president of the National Academy of Sciences. In asking him for the Academy’s assistance, Lyman especially wanted advice on how the government should coordinate its scientific activities to achieve the best possible outcomes in the most efficient manner. The Academy acted quickly, reporting its recommendations to the Commission only three months after receiving Lyman’s request.

In brief, the Academy report²² first asserted that “the administration of a scientific bureau or department involves greater difficulty than that of a pure business department,” requiring “a combination of scientific knowledge with administrative ability, which is more difficult to command than either of these qualities separately.” The report then argued that the difficulties are exacerbated when there is no central authority to coordinate disparate activities. Therefore, the Academy concluded, the government should establish a Department of Science under the direction of a science administrator.

Recognizing that establishing a new department might be a political non-starter, the report stated that in the absence of a Department of Science, all federal science activities should be consolidated into a single existing department, and divided among four bureaus²³ within that department. To oversee the bureaus, the Academy proposed a commission consisting of five government and four non-government members.²⁴ Finally, the report urged the government not to undertake work that was more appropriate to individual investigators, universities, or the states; but instead should focus its activities on increasing knowledge that would promote the general welfare, thereby implying the importance of practical outcomes in federal science activities.

From a 21st century perspective, the last proposition seems very strange, given the extensive role the federal government plays today in both sponsoring academic research and maintaining major research facilities open to scientists of every stripe.²⁵ But in 1884, none of today’s federal agencies that dole out tens of billions of dollars annually to America’s research community were in existence, or could even have been imagined.

To paint the contrasting policy pictures with an even broader brush, the differences between 1884 and modern America are so immense, that if the National Academy of Sciences and its sister organizations, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine (known collectively as the National Academies), were asked for a set of recommendations today, its list would likely not include a single one of the items Marsh sent Allison at Lyman’s request. In fact, a 21st-century list would almost be the antithesis of the Academy’s 1884 set of prescriptions.

Lyman had not asked Marsh to assess whether the federal government was spending too much money on research. As a result, the Academy remained silent on that issue.

The National Academy membership included many of America’s leading scientific lights, but its role in the policy and political arenas was not well established. In truth, it did not speak for the nation’s scientific community, and witnesses at the Allison Commission hearings made that quite clear, often to keep their own ox from being gored.

John Wesley Powell is a prime example. He had replaced Clarence King in 1881 as director of the U.S. Geological Survey, but he still maintained his directorship of the Smithsonian’s Bureau of Ethnology. In his testimony, he labeled the Academy’s proposal for a nine-member commission representing military, civilian, governmental, and private interests completely unworkable. Instead—as you might guess—he proposed handing over all federal science programs to the Smithsonian, whose board, he asserted, had sufficient breadth and expertise to oversee their conduct.

William E. Chandler, Secretary of the Navy, is another example. He was intent upon keeping naval science under control of the military, and spoke out strongly against any centralized control of government science, either through a new Department of Science, or through consolidation of all activities into an existing one. Instead, he testified in favor of having each government department maintain authority over science programs that best suited its needs. In other words, for Chandler, the status quo was just fine.

Simon Newcombe, who served Chandler as the Navy’s first scientist, sided with his boss, but with a caveat. Newcombe proposed that the president be required to appoint a single administrator to oversee and coordinate science activities across the federal government. Newcombe is often forgotten in the annals of American science and technology policy, but his recommendation deserves credit, as the precursor of today’s White House structures: The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), all of which are chaired or co-chaired by the President’s Science Advisor, or more technically, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into a year and a half, as the Allison Commission methodically worked its way through the technical and administrative issues. As more time passed and more witnesses testified, it became apparent that the commission had opened up a Pandora’s box. Although political philosophy was not in its original charter, a debate over the proper role of government in the lives of the public became enmeshed in the discussions of financial and structural issues.

Louis Agassiz, the renowned biologist and geologist from Harvard, one of the leaders of the Lazzaroni and a founder of the National Academy of Sciences, was a staunch believer in limited government, and he made his opinion clear. Government should stay out of the lives of its citizens as much as possible, he said, and insofar as science is concerned, it should undertake or sponsor only those activities that lie beyond the capabilities of universities, private citizens, or associations, such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. To some extent, his position echoed the message in the Academy Report, but unlike the Academy’s, it was predicated on laisssez-faire, or libertarian beliefs, rather than on practical public policy rationales that underscored the Academy’s assessment.

Powell was not willing to let Agassiz’s challenge go unanswered. He publicly attacked not only the foundation of Agassiz’s philosophy, but also his personal integrity—quite viciously, in fact—accusing his adversary of planning to use the great wealth he had accumulated over many years to establish supreme control over American science.²⁶ In terms of the nexus between political philosophy, economics, and science policy, Powell made cogent arguments that still have immense resonance more than 130 years later. The following words²⁷ capture the kernel of his beliefs:

                    (6) ALL GOVERNMENTAL RESEARCH STIMULATES, PROMOTES AND GUIDES PRIVATE RESEARCH

In essence, Powell made intellectual and economic arguments for federal support of scientific research, as well as for open communication of research results. They are guiding principles for federal science and technology policy in modern America, although it is likely that few of today’s policymakers recognize their connection to Powell.

The Allison Commission, which had been authorized on July 7, 1884, concluded its work on January 30, 1886. During its 18 months of existence, it had contended with charges of personal aggrandizement leveled by one witness against another; turf battles between government bureaus; charges of corruption that heated up dramatically after Grover Cleveland—the first Democrat to be elected since the end of the Civil War—became president on March 4, 1885; and battles over political philosophy it had never envisioned. When it finally called it a day, the Commission elected not to alter any existing laws or recommend any changes to the conduct of science. Nor did it propose any reorganization of research structures within the federal government. In so doing, it firmly rejected the idea of a Department of Science, but tacitly affirmed the importance of science to the national interest that Powell had provided. If there was any loser in the entire affair, it was probably the National Academy of Sciences, which came under criticism for blundering badly in its failure to convince any member of the commission of its principal recommendation: the creation of either a Department of Science, or an alternate centralized administrative science structure.

The Allison Commission affair left a blemish on the National Academy of Sciences’ advisory reputation. But the Academy’s failing would earn it a minor demerit compared with what was about to unfold for American science, more generally, in the last decade of the 19th century. The Commission’s 1886 decision to accept the status quo and not change the way the nation managed its science portfolio would prove to be a false indicator of how members of Congress truly felt.

The unease began to play out 6 years later, and involved America’s most respected science administrator, John Wesley Powell,²⁸ who had been directing the U.S. Geological Survey since 1881. He had weathered the survey storm of 1878, and had seen his political philosophy tacitly embraced by the Allison commission. But for years, he had been unsuccessful in getting Congress to recognize that water management and irrigation were critical issues in the rapidly developing arid West.

The National Academy had come to his assistance when it submitted its 1878 report to Abram Hewitt. It had endorsed Powell’s recommendation that the U.S. Geological Survey develop policies and regulations for land classification and water rights. In spite of the Academy’s position, Congress had refused to go along. Instead, it had responded by restricting the Survey’s work to data collection and barring it from engaging in all policy and regulatory matters.

Now, 10 years later, members of Congress representing Western states were beginning to grasp the gravity of the water issues. With their prodding, the House and Senate passed a joint resolution directing the Secretary of the Interior to commission an irrigation study.²⁹ It specifically called for policy recommendations on dams, reservoirs, and waterways, and it surprised no one that Powell’s Geological Survey would be assigned the task.

Perhaps Congress had not foreseen the action the Executive Branch would take, but with or without congressional approval, the General Land Office elected to suspend all filings until the survey had been completed. Powell immediately saw the opening he had long been waiting for: to put an end to haphazard development and replace, it with sustainable land use policies and regulations based on scientific data, especially those resulting from comprehensive irrigation and drainage surveys.³⁰ He emphasized that he would need substantial time to complete his comprehensive studies.

Western developers with major commercial interests would have none of that, and they reacted swiftly. In their view, it was acceptable for scientists to generate data, and even make recommendations on specific projects, but it was completely unacceptable for scientists to hold commercial interests hostage to their findings, more broadly—which, of course, was Powell’s intention.

In light of the moneyed opposition, it didn’t take Congress long to give Powell his irrigation walking papers. Appropriators quickly eliminated every penny of funding his survey work required.³¹ But, having been stung by Powell’s overreach, legislators decided to send a stern message to America’s scientists: keep your noses out of things political and stick to things scientific. To make sure the recipients got the message, Congress slashed funding in 1892, not only for the U.S. Geological Survey, but also for the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Smithsonian Institution, the Naval Observatory, and the Ethnology Bureau. Lesson learned!

In spite of the painful rebuke, the National Academy, now under the leadership of Wolcott Gibbs,³² decided to weigh in on another policy matter, one that was only slightly less fraught. While water was a serious Western development issue, in reality, it only directly affected people who were living in the arid West or who had commercial interests there, such as the powerful railroads. From the distance, there wasn’t much for anyone else to see. That was not true about forests.

Images of deforestation were not easy to ignore, and protection of forests had been on the minds of conservationists for many decades. For a number of years, forest preservation had gained little traction, but in 1891, Congress finally authorized the president to dedicate forested lands. During the next 2 years, 18 million acres received the reserve designation, although without any regulations regarding management. Gibbs thought the time was ripe for the Academy to weigh in, and with the backing of a number of prominent conservationists, he approached Hoke Smith, Secretary of the Interior and a noted reformer, with the suggestion that the Academy would be happy to carry out a forestry study if the secretary were to make the request. Hoke welcomed the proposal, and in June 1895 made a formal request—along with $25,000—for an Academy study.³³

On February 22, 1897, shortly before William McKinley entered the White House, President Cleveland issued a forest proclamation. Using the Academy’s preliminary report as the basis for his action, he designated 13 new forest preserves covering more than 21 million additional acres. But the Academy’s celebration was to be short lived. Congress challenged the president’s authority to make such a designation, and shelved the bulk of the Academy’s final report, which contained detailed recommendations on the management of the reserves. Congress did provide funding for fire protection in the final 3 years of the 1890’s, but it would wait until the dawn of a new century for the full weight of the Academy’s recommendations to finally take hold.

Before we close the curtain on the Gilded Age, we need to take a brief look at the status of medicine and public health policy in the last few decades of 19th century America. The narrative is relatively short.

Except for the armed services, the states and private practitioners had full responsibility for the nation’s public health issues.³⁴ Among them was little, if any, coordination, and until Massachusetts broke the ice in 1869, there was not a single board of health. The American Medical Association, founded in 1847, and the American Public Health Association, established in 1872, led the way on matters of public health. But by 1875, in competing proposals, both organizations had begun to agitate for a centralized board of health, or alternatively, a national department of health.

Nothing focuses the political mind better than a crisis, and 1878 delivered one in the form of a yellow fever epidemic in the Mississippi River Valley. The scourge, which eventually claimed as many as 20,000 lives, put quarantine issues at the top of the public health agenda. It was the only practical option policymakers had, since the cause of yellow fever was not known. (It would be discovered 22 years later by Army Medical Corps physicians.³⁵)

In 1879, after considerable debate and political jousting, Congress finally agreed³⁶ to establish a National Board of Health (NBH) charging it with three tasks: “(1) obtaining information on all matters affecting public health; (2) advising governmental departments, the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, and the executives of several states on all questions submitted by them—or whenever in the opinion of the NBH such advice may tend to the preservation and improvement of public health; and (3) with the assistance of the National Academy of Sciences, reporting to Congress on a plan for a national public health organization, with special attention given to quarantine, and especially regulations to be established among the states, as well as a national quarantine system.”³⁷

Three months later, Congress enacted additional legislation—“An Act to Prevent the Introduction of Contagious Diseases into the United States”—conferring on the National Board of Health new quarantine powers for a 4-year period. The act removed the quarantine authority from the Marine Health System, to which Congress had granted it only 13 months earlier. That action violated a cardinal rule of politics: once you have granted someone something, don’t expect to be able to take it away without a fight. The seeds of National Board of Health’s failure had been sewn.

The Marine Health Service fought the National Board of Health every step of the way, taking full advantage of congressional states’ rights proponents, who objected to the broad federal powers the Board had been given. Four years after it had been established, the National Health Board and the health research activities it fostered were history. By refusing to reauthorize the Board, Congress effectively ended its mandate, although as an entity it remained on the books until 1893, when it met its demise with finality.

Although the Marine Health Service recovered its quarantine responsibilities, it did not have a mandate to fulfill any of the medical research objectives of the National Board of Health. It remained for the Army Medical Corps to pick up the pieces. Bailey K. Ashford, John Shaw Billings, Walter Reed, George Sternberg, and J.J. Woodward are names that stand out as leaders of those research efforts. They achieved success, in spite of limited budgets, largely through their brilliance and dedication.³⁸

As the 19th century came to a close, American science stood on the cusp of ascendancy, but many policy questions and political considerations remained unresolved. It would take two major wars before the nation’s science and science and technology policy would achieve the prominence we see today. The next chapter will take us through the impacts of those two world conflicts and set the stage for the modern era of American dominance.