Surgeon General of the United States Navy

This article is about the senior physician in the United States Navy. For the head of the United States Public Health Service, see Surgeon General of the United States. For other uses, see Surgeon General (disambiguation).

Surgeon General of the United States Navy
Incumbent VADM C. Forrest Faison III
Formation	1869
First holder	William Maxwell Wood
Website	Official Website

The Surgeon General of the United States Navy is the most senior commissioned officer of the Medical Corps of the United States Navy. The Surgeon General of the Navy is a member of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

Establishment of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery

Main article: Bureau of Medicine and Surgery

On 31 August 1842, the United States Congress passed a Navy appropriation bill that was a blueprint for efficiency. The legislation provided for five Navy bureaus United States Navy bureau system to replace the outdated Board of Navy Commissioners—Yards and Docks; Construction, Equipment, and Repair; Provisions and Clothing; Ordnance and Hydrography; and Medicine and Surgery. Heading each of the bureaus was a “Chief” to be appointed by the President of the United States.

The Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) became the central administrative headquarters for the Navy Medical Department, and those names became interchangeable. The general order of 26 November 1842, which defined the duties of the new bureaus, charged BUMED with:

• All medicines and medical stores of every description, used in the treatment of the sick, the diseased and the wounded;
• All boxes, vials, and other vessels containing the same;
• All clothing, beds, and bedding for the sick;
• All surgical instruments of every kind;
• The management of hospitals, so far as the patients therein are concerned;
• All appliances of every sort, used in surgical and medical practice;
• All contracts, accounts, and returns, relating to these and such other subjects as shall hereafter be assigned to this bureau.

Overseeing all of these duties, and directing the medical department, was the Chief of BUMED, William P. C. Barton. Barton served at this post until 1844. He was followed by Thomas Harris, William Whelan, Phineas Horwitz, and William Maxwell Wood. Since the days of Barton’s directorship the most senior ranking physician in the Navy Medical Department has held the title of Chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

Creation of the title

On 3 March 1871, Congress passed legislation granting medical and other staff officers of the Navy “relative rank” with grades “equal to but not identical with the grades of the line.” This Naval Appropriations Act went further than any previous Congressional action in transforming and enhancing the Navy Medical Department. The Chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery now had the additional title “Surgeon General,” with the relative rank of Commodore. At the helm of this “revitalized” organization stood the first Surgeon General, William Maxwell Wood (1809–1880), a man entering his 42nd year of a naval service as unusual and varied as could be. Wood had served aboard USS Poinsett, one of the first steam vessels of the Navy, and designated flagship during the “expedition for the suppression of Indian hostilities on the coast of Florida” (a.k.a. the Seminole Wars). Wood served shore duty at Sackets Harbor, New York, Baltimore, Maryland, had duty as Fleet Surgeon of the Pacific Fleet, and served under Commodore John D. Sloat in California during the Mexican–American War. However fitting he may have been as the first Navy Surgeon General, he served less than two years.

In November 2011, VADM Matthew L. Nathan, took office becoming the 37th Surgeon General of the United States Navy, and 41st Chief of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

Name	Dates of Tenure
William P. C. Barton	1842–1844
Thomas Harris	1844–1853
William Whelan	1853–1865
Phineas J. Horwitz	1865–1869
William Maxwell Wood	1869–1871

See also

• Surgeon General of the United States
• Surgeon General of the United States Army
• Surgeon General of the United States Air Force

Further reading

• Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, "The United States Navy Medical Department at War, 1941-1945." Washington, 1946. 757 pp.; describe the operational role of naval medical units ashore and afloat partly online
• A History of Medicine in the Early U.S. Navy, Harold D. Langley Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000
• The History of the Medical Department of the United States Navy in World War II (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1953) online

External links

• Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery
• Early Civil War Treatise on Gunshot Wounds By Surgeon General P.J. Horwitz Shapell Manuscript Foundation

Surgeon General	Date(s) of Tenure
William Maxwell Wood	1869–1871
Jonathan M. Foltz	1871–1872
James C. Palmer	1872–1873
Joseph Beale	1873–1877
William Grier	1877–1878
J. Winthrop Taylor	1878–1879
Phillip S. Wales	1878–1884
Francis M. Gunnell	1884–1888
J. Mills Browne	1888–1894
James R. Tryon	1894–1897
Newton L. Bates	1897
William K. Van Reypen	1897–1902
Presley Marion Rixey	1902–1910
Charles F. Stokes	1910–1914
William C. Braisted	1914–1920
Edward R. Stitt	1920–1928
Charles E. Riggs	1928–1933
Percival S. Rossiter	1933–1938
Ross T. McIntire	1938–1946
Clifford A. Swanson	1946–1951
H. Lamont Pugh	1951–1955
Bartholomew W. Hogan	1955–1961
Edward C. Kenney	1961–1965
Robert B. Brown	1965–1969
George M. Davis	1969–1973
Donald L. Custis	1973–1976
Willard P. Arentzen	1976–1980
J. William Cox	1980–1983
Lewis H. Seaton	1983–1987
James A. Zimble	1987–1991
Donald F. Hagen	1991–1995
Harold M. Koenig	1995–1998
Richard A. Nelson	1998–2001
Michael L. Cowan	2001–2004
Donald Arthur	2004–2007
Adam M. Robinson, Jr.	2007–2011
Matthew L. Nathan	2011–2015
C. Forrest Faison, III	2015–Present