Introduction
On January 1, 1892, a 15 year old Irish girl named Annie Moore became the first immigrant to enter the United States through Ellis Island, the newly opened federal immigration depot in New York Harbor. The depot opened for business at the beginning of the peak immigration period in U.S. history. During its first year of operation, Ellis Island processed nearly half a million people, and the annual number of newcomers received there more than doubled within 15 years. By 1924, when more restrievive laws greatly slowed the flow of immigrants to America, some 12 million people had already enered teh country through Ellis Island. Each of these immigrants passed under the watchful eyes of physicians of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) before being admitted to this country.
The Public Health Service was given increasing responsibility for quarantine inspection of ships arriving from foreign ports. Federal legislation in 1891 also mandated the medical inspection of all arriving immigrants and assigned this task to the PHS. The law stipulated the exclusion of "all idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become public charges, persons suffering from a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease" and criminals. The physicians who performed these inspections saw themselves as "keepers of the gate."