Armstrong – Table of Contents

World War I was extremely active. From a professional standpoint, he was grateful for
the experience of seeing a wide variety of ailments originating in many lands; these were
primarily eye (trachoma) and skin afflictions that he had either never, or rarely,
encountered while he was in medical school or during internship. He spent his entire days
doing the physical examinations and evaluations of the immigrants’ eligibility for
entering the United States.
He found some of the immigrants’ plights tragic because some family members
passed their physical examinations and were eligible for admission, and other family
members did not pass the physical or mental requirements for entry. This situation gave
rise, in many cases, to desperate circumstances because immigrants frequently came with
limited funds; the option for stranded families, with some members ineligible for entry to
the United States, was to return back to their country of origin or to their port of
embarkation. Alternatively, the eligible immigrants would enter the United States, and
the non-eligible family members would go back. When immigrant children were
ineligible because of health reasons, the entire family would frequently have to return to
the point of origin. In many instances, immigrants arrived sick with medical, emotional,
intellectual or contagious illnesses. The Medical Department quarantined the ones with
contagious illnesses (6) until the end of the period of communicability, and then the
doctors released them from confinement. The Medical Department admitted those
patients with treatable illnesses who required hospitalization to the USPHS Marine
Hospitals. When these patients recovered, they were either allowed to enter the United
States or they were deported. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (6) bore
the expense for the hospitalization of sick immigrants. Prior to World War I there were