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Navy Medicine History Blog Archive

Navy Medicine Treats the Czar’s Navy

By André Sobocinski
5/1/2021

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.

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Revisiting Navy Medicine’s Field of Dreams: A Look Back at Navy Medicine’s Curious Baseball Heritage

By André Sobocinski
4/1/2021

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.

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Medical Corps Ship Namesakes

By André Sobocinski
3/1/2021

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.

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Remembering the “33”: Looking Back at Navy Cross Corpsmen of Vietnam

By André B. Sobocinski, Historian, BUMED
2/1/2021

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.

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Navy Medicine and the Investigation on Thompson’s Island, 1823

By André B. Sobocinski, Historian, BUMED
1/1/2021

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.

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President Roosevelt, Rear Admiral Rixey and the Brownson Affair of December 1907

By André B. Sobocinski, Historian, BUMED
12/1/2020

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.

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A Look Back at Naval Hospital Harriman, the Navy’s First Convalescent Hospital

By André B. Sobocinski, Historian, BUMED
11/1/2020

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. 

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The Grey-Hulled Cousins of Hospital Ships: A Short History of the Navy’s Evacuation Transport Ships

By André B. Sobocinski, Historian, BUMED
10/1/2020

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.

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U.S. Naval Hospital Yokohama and the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923

By André B. Sobocinski, Historian, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery
9/1/2020

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.

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Navy Dentistry's First Year

By André B. Sobocinski, Historian, BUMED
8/1/2020

On August 22, 1912, President William Taft signed into law an act creating a formal corps of uniformed dentists in the U.S. Navy.

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