"Nurse," as a title for junior enlisted medical personnel, was replaced by the title "bayman" (defined as one who manned the sick bay) in the early 1870s. U.S. Navy Regulations of 1876 used the title officially, and it remained valid for 22 more years.

An apothecary of the 1890s mixed and dispensed all medication aboard a ship. He was responsible for all medical department reports, supply requests, and correspondence, and he helped maintain medical department records. The apothecary administered anesthesia during surgery and was the primary instructor for new baymen.

The apothecaries' responsibilities did not end there, however. (See figure APP-I-1.) During shipboard surgery, the bayman focused an electric light on the incision site while the surgeon did his work on what served as a combination of both writing and operating table. He sterilized surgical instruments by boiling them, then stored them in a solution of 5 percent phenol. Bandages and dressings were sterilized by baking them in a coffee can in the ship's oven. Sick bay itself was prepared for surgery by wiping the entire room down with a chlorine solution. On days when the ship's routine called for scrubbing bags and hammocks, a bayman was responsible for washing those of the sick. When required, he painted the ship's medical spaces.

During the last two decades of the 1800s, many in the naval medical establishment called for reforms in the enlisted components of the medical department. Medicine had by now progressed far more as a science, and civilian hospitals all had teaching schools for their nurses. Foreign navies had trained medical Sailors, and the U.S. Army had established its own Hospital Corps of enlisted men on March 1, 1887. Navy Surgeon General J. R. Tryon argued, in his annual report of 1893, against the practice of assigning landsmen to the medical department with nothing more than on-the-job-training. He advocated the urgent need for an organized hospital corps.

Physicians in the fleet were equally certain of the need for changes. Surgeon C. A. Sigfried of the USS Massachusetts made his views known in his report to the Surgeon General in 1897.

The importance of improving the medical department of our naval service is more and more apparent, in view of the recent advances in the methods and rapidity of killing and wounding. The great want is a body of trained bay men or nurses, and these should be better paid and of better stamp and fiber. Now and then we procure a good man, and proceed with his training as a bay man. He soon finds opportunity for betterment in some one of the various departments of the ship, in the matter of pay and emolument, either in some yeoman's billet or in some place where his meager $18 per month can be suddenly increased to $30, $40, or even $60 per month. The bay man, who should be an intelligent, sober man, and well trained in many things pertaining to nursing, dieting, ambulance, and aids to wounded, and have a moderate amount of education, finds his pay at present among the lowest in the ship's company; even the men caring for storerooms get more per month.

HOSPITAL STEWARDS AND HOSPITAL APPRENTICES

Arguments for a professional, well-trained group of individuals to provide medical care for the Navy finally paid off, although it took the imminent danger of combat in the Spanish-American War to spur Congress into action. Within a bill aimed at building the armed forces was a section to provide for the Navy's long-needed Hospital Corps. It was approved by President William McKinley on June 17, 1898. From that date to the present, either generically or by rating title, medical Sailors have been called "Hospital Corpsmen."

To ensure that the members of the new Hospital Corps were adequately trained in the disciplines pertinent to both medicine and the Navy, a basic school for corpsmen was established at the U.S. Naval Hospital Norfolk (Portsmouth), Virginia. Originally called the School of Instruction, it opened September 2, 1902. Its curriculum included anatomy and physiology, bandaging, nursing, first aid, pharmacy, clerical work, and military drill. The first class of 28 corpsmen was graduated on December 15, 1902. (See figure APP-I-2.)

The school continued for a brief time and was then moved to the Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C., remaining in existence there until 1911. For the next 3 years, there was no basic school for corpsmen, but the concept was revived in 1914. The next two Hospital Corps Training Schools were opened in Newport, Rhode Island, and on Yerba Buena Island, California.

Figure APP-I-1.-An apothecary (petty officer first class) treats a shipmate aboard the USS Boston in 1888.