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This major thrust
for a federal public health agency received its chief impetus, not from the
APHA, however, but from the public outcry over the terrible epidemics which
struck the United States during the 1870's. Cholera returned to the United
States between 1873 and 1875 killing 3,000 people in the Mississippi Valley
alone. There had been efforts in 1866, 1869, 1871, and 1874 to get Congress
to pass a national quarantine law to protect all portions of the nation from
the arrival via ships of epidemic diseases, but, interestingly, Northern
business interests had blocked these bills, fearing federal interference
with their lucrative overseas trade. Now it was the South, that former
bastion of states rights, which was anxious for federal quarantine
protection. |