| The story of Sgt. Schmid and Navy Medicine’s rehabilitation of the blind in World War II | For thousands of World War II veterans wounded during the conflict, the war’s end was only the beginning of a long and trying road to recovery. Al Schmid was one of these veterans. | | 1/16/2019 | /HistoryBlogThumbs/Sgt.%20Schmid.jpg |
| A Hero’s Image: Dr. Al Mateczun and the Medal of Honor Photograph | Before his career in the Navy, retired captain Dr. Al Mateczun, MC, graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1964. After pilot training and reconnaissance school at Shaw AFB, tours in France and Idaho, he deployed to Tan Son Nhut AB, Vietnam where he flew 200 missions in the RF-4C Phantom reconnaissance plane. | | 4/2/2019 | /HistoryBlogThumbs/Dr.%20Al%20Mateczun.jpg |
| A Portrait of HM2 Bobby Ray, Heroic “Doc” of Liberty Bridge | In the early morning of March 19, 1969, a Marine combat base at Phu Loc 6 near An Hoa, Vietnam, became the scene of a surprise enemy attack. As the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) infiltrated the camp’s barbed wire perimeter, a 24-year old corpsman named Bobby Ray charged into the melee to render emergency aid to the mounting casualties. | | 1/22/2019 | /HistoryBlogThumbs/HM2%20Bobby%20Ray.jpg |
| A Navy Nurse Remembers President George H.W. Bush | I reported to the White House in April of 1986, and was there until December 31 of 1989. I was there for President Reagan and Vice President Bush, and then President Bush and Vice President Quayle. Our job, the quick and dirty, is that the 25th Amendment says that if at any time the president can’t do his job, his responsibilities pass to the next person in succession. | | 12/1/2018 | /HistoryBlogThumbs/GHWBush.jpg |
| Songs Out of Time: Rediscovering a Navy Surgeon’s Life and Music | “His music fits right into the genre of salon music – I can see why it was so successful in its day.” said Stephen Swanson, a freelance pianist and choir master based in St. Paul, Minn.
Swanson is referring to Dr. Thomas Van Dyke Wiesenthal, a naval physician who more than dabbled as a composer of popular song before his death 185 years ago. | | 11/1/2018 | /HistoryBlogThumbs/SongOutOfTime.jpg |
| A Hero of the Bloody Nose Ridge: The Story of Pharmacist’s Mate Third Class Joe Marquez and the Fight for Peleliu | On the morning of September 15, 1944, the 1st Marine Division began their assault on a tiny coral island in the Central Pacific called Peleliu. For Pharmacist’s Mate Third Class Eleuterio “Joe” Marquez[1] this would be a baptism of fire. | | 10/1/2018 | /HistoryBlogThumbs/Joe%20Marquez.jpg |
| The Workhorse of Normandy: Remembering the Role of LSTs in Medical Evacuation | June 6, 1944, Normandy Coast, France. Pharmacist’s Mate 1st Class Stephen Cromwell stood on the bow of the LST-280 watching the Higgins Boats transporting troops to the beachhead. | | 5/21/2019 | The Workhorse of Normandy |
| Remembering Navy Medicine in the Balkan Crisis | When the United Nations peacekeeping mission started the U.S. agreed to provide medical support to Zagreb city where the U.N. set up its logistics headquarters. | | 7/3/2019 | Fleet-Hospital-6-Camp-Pleso-Zagreb-Croatia-March-1994.jpg |
| Reaching the Pinnacle: The Origin of Independent Duty Corpsmen (IDCs) in the U.S. Navy | On the night of April 17, 1918, the ammunition ship SS Florence “H,” caught fire while moored in Quiberon Bay in the south coast of Brittany, France. | | 7/11/2019 | IDC-Zeller |
| The Enduring Journey: A Historical Review of Medical Readiness through Training | With the pressing need for skilled medical personnel in the Korean War the Navy established Field Medical Service Schools (FMSS) in Camp Lejeune, N.C., and at Camp Pendleton, Calif.[i] Between October 1950 and July 1953 over 5,000 Hospital Corpsmen trained as field medical technicians at these schools, among them four individuals who later received the Medal of Honor for their heroic deeds on the Korean peninsula. | | 8/23/2019 | /HistoryBlogThumbs/Field-Medical-Training-Instruction-ca-1953-150x150.jpg |
| Witness to Pearl Harbor: USS Solace | USS Solace 0755, Sunday, December 7th, 1941. Pearl Harbor, T.H. A group of physicians eating breakfast in the wardroom of the hospital ship USS Solace (AH-5) become startled when several explosions were heard. As the ship began to vibrate the impression that an earthquake had hit soon shifted … | | 12/6/2019 | USS Solace, Dec 7 1941 |
| Beyond Heroism: Hospital Corpsmen and the Battle for Iwo Jima | At 0900 on February 19th, 1945, the first assault waves from the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions hit the beaches of Iwo Jima. Embedded within these units were corpsmen like Pharmacist's Mate Second Class Stanley Dabrowski, of New Britain, Conn., who remembered, the tremendous noise, concussion of small arms fire, explosions of artillery and sounds of shells. "As we were coming into the beach we were under a rolling barrage of 16-inch guns of the battleships. You could just feel those shells going over your head." | | 2/5/2020 | /HistoryBlogThumbs/IWO-small.jpg |
| The Navy’s Fight against Scurvy | Few diseases have been more synonymous with sailors than scurvy. From the dawn of time scurvy has been described as the “Black Death of the sea,” and was once even as deadly as smallpox. Yet years after the British Royal Navy successfully demonstrated the treatment and prevention of this affliction through citrus fruit and lemon juice rations the disease continued to plague the U.S. Navy. | | 3/6/2020 | Scurvy |
| Naval Hygiene in the Age of Epidemics | The Navy’s South Atlantic Squadron arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1894 just as a deadly disease epidemic hit the city. To protect the crews, the shipboard surgeons—immersed in the principles of naval hygiene—issued a series of strict sanitary guidelines. | | 4/1/2020 | Hygiene |
| The Saga of Idaho, Hospital Ship of the Asiatic Squadron | Long before the appearance of the first white-hulled hospital ships, the Navy employed an assortment of vessels to meet the need of hospitalization at sea. Among the lesser known, and perhaps most unique, was a sailing ship commissioned in the age of steam called USS Idaho. | | 5/18/2020 | Idaho |
| Building Corpsmen Culture: The Early Years of the Hospital Corps School | For almost as long as there has been a Hospital Corps there has existed a school charged with imparting the values, traditions and requisite tools to prospective corpsmen. On June 18, 1914, the Navy established the Hospital Corps School at the Naval Training Station in Newport, R.I. | | 6/1/2020 | corpsman |
| The Sailor’s Diet of 1862 | On July 25, 1862, following reports of sickness and low morale, Fleet Surgeon William Maxwell Wood was ordered by the Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to conduct a medical and sanitary inspection of the James River Flotilla. | | 7/1/2020 | Sailors Diet |
| Navy Dentistry's First Year | On August 22, 1912, President William Taft signed into law an act creating a formal corps of uniformed dentists in the U.S. Navy. | | 8/1/2020 | DentalCorps |
| U.S. Naval Hospital Yokohama and the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923 | Nearly 20 years after an era of self-imposed seclusion was broken by an American trade treaty, the Japanese ports in Tokyo Bay had blossomed into thriving marketplaces of foreign trade. Principal among them was Yokohama. | | 9/1/2020 | NH Yokohama |
| The Grey-Hulled Cousins of Hospital Ships: A Short History of the Navy’s Evacuation Transport Ships | On October 12, 1944, Lieutenant Commander Delbert McNamara wrote a letter to the Commander, Fifth Amphibious Force in which he praised the medical care he received aboard USS Rixey (APH-3). McNamara, himself a Navy doctor, was wounded when an enemy shell penetrated the 3rd Marine Division hospital during the Battle of Guam. | | 10/1/2020 | Grey Hull |
| A Look Back at Naval Hospital Harriman, the Navy’s First Convalescent Hospital | On November 16, 1942, the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) commissioned Naval Hospital Harriman. Formerly known as Arden House, the facility had been the ancestral home of the U.S. ambassador to Russia, and later governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman. In August 1942, Harriman offered his home to the U.S. Navy for use as a hospital. | | 11/1/2020 | NH Harriman |
| President Roosevelt, Rear Admiral Rixey and the Brownson Affair of December 1907 | On Christmas Eve 1907, Rear Adm. Willard Brownson, Chief of the U.S. Navy Bureau of Navigation, submitted his resignation to President Theodore Roosevelt in protest against the president’s controversial decision granting medical officers full domain and command over naval hospital ships. Sometimes known as the “Brownson Affair,” the president’s action would slice into heart of the Navy hierarchy and thrust the issue of command authority into the public spotlight. | | 12/1/2020 | Rixey |
| Navy Medicine and the Investigation on Thompson’s Island, 1823 | When the United States acquired the Spanish colony of Florida in 1821, Key West was nothing more than a sleepy fishing village known originally known as Cayo Huesa (“Bone Reef”). Seeing the strategic value of the property, the Navy took control over Key West in March 1822 and renamed it “Thompson’s Island” in honor of the Secretary of the Navy, Smith Thompson. | | 1/1/2021 | ThompsonIsland |
| Remembering the “33”: Looking Back at Navy Cross Corpsmen of Vietnam | Petty Officer Third Class William Barber deployed to Vietnam in June 1968, a little less than two years after enlisting in the Navy. When arriving in theater he was assigned to India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. | | 2/1/2021 | VietnamNavyCross |
| Medical Corps Ship Namesakes | Since 1920, when the first warships were named in honor of naval medical personnel, the US Navy has honored 15 physicians (Medical Corps officers) as namesakes for some 20 vessels. They range from heroic doctors who served on the battlefields of the Civil War, World War I and World War II to prominent leaders, innovators and pioneers who helped guide the Navy Medical Department in pivotal times in our history. | | 3/1/2021 | Medical Corps Ship Namesakes |
| Revisiting Navy Medicine’s Field of Dreams: A Look Back at Navy Medicine’s Curious Baseball Heritage | April 1st is the first day of the Major League Baseball season. For baseball fans across the globe “Opening Day” is a special occasion marking the return of America’s pastime—and with it, a hint of a post-pandemic world and return to normalcy. | | 4/1/2021 | NVAMEDBaseball |
| Navy Medicine Treats the Czar’s Navy | If the Japanese surprise attack on Port Arthur, Liaodong Peninsula, in 1904 marked the beginning of the end of the Imperial Russian Navy, the Battle of Tsushima was undeniably its curtain call. Russian losses in the battle fought on May 27-28, 1905 amounted to 11 battleships, six destroyers, four cruisers sunk and some 4,380 sailors killed. | | 5/1/2021 | NavMedHelpsCzarsNavy |