William Minor Bryan - Years Served: 1919-1921

William Minor Bryan was born January 24, 1882 in Key West, Albemarle County, Virginia. He received his medical education at the University of Virginia, graduating in 1906. He was commissioned an assistant surgeon on May 4, 1907. Soon thereafter he married Henrietta Kemp on November 5, 1908 in Charlottesville, Virginia.  He came from a southern family that had fought on the confederate side of the Civil War and his father, Captain John Randolph Bryan had served under General J.B. Magruder being the first person to go up in an air balloon to conduct aerial espionage of the northern army.[1] Dr. Bryan was the seventh of eight children and must have had a strong calling for the medical field to endure a college education and then seek a medical degree. He served at the Baltimore, MD quarantine station in 1908, as the officer in charge at the South Atlantic quarantine station in Inverness, Georgia in 1909[2] and as the officer in charge at Cape Fear quarantine station from 1910 to 1912.[3]  In 1914 he worked on the typhoid investigation in Berkeley County West Virginia which resulted in a publication titled “Rural sanitation, with special reference to typhoid fever” authored by Surgeon L. L. Lumsden, in charge along with Passed Asst. Surgeon W. M. Bryan.[4] In fiscal year 1915 Bryan was placed in charge of the Mobile, Alabama quarantine station.[5]  In 1917, at the request of the Department of Commerce, Bryan investigated the drinking water supplied to the customhouse at Boston.[6]

Twelve years after his commission, on January 10, 1919 Bryan became the third Public Health physician appointed Medical Officer in Charge of the Boston quarantine station. In his first year, his staff inspected 468 vessels, 39,058 crews and 79,970 passengers. This was sizable increase in passengers compared to any preceding year due to Boston’s role as a debarkation port for military personnel. Transports passing through quarantine had their military personnel classed as passengers.[7] In 1920 Bryan’s staff inspected 679 vessels, 35,547 crew and 45,021 passengers – reflecting the continued return of military personnel, migration from war ravaged nations and the open immigration policies of the United States.[8]

That same year, in the midst of influenza pandemic, he cared for 263 naval patients suffering with this disease. In addition to the hospital care afforded these patients, the station was used by the United States Public Health Service conjointly with the Navy in certain clinical and bacteriological experiments,  including an unsuccessful effort to transmit influenza. During these experiments 118 Navy volunteers were cared for at this station. 

During Bryan’s tenure, the quarantine station saw its largest incursion of typhus cases in the city’s history. The prevalence of typhus fever throughout central Europe, together with the arrival of a number of vessels from European ports, was the key issue during fiscal year 1921. Additional restrictions were placed on travelers from all continental European ports early in 1921 including examining steerage passengers after disrobing, dis-infestation of those infected with pediculi, and the detention for 12 days of those passengers on vessels whose bill of health showed insufficient precaution at port of embarkation.  When Bryan first arrived the quarantine station could provide hospital care for only 100 patients and its detention barracks could hold 1,300 patients. While this might seem like a large quarantine station, its facilities were woefully inadequate to detain the 2,300 passengers diverted from New York in 1921 – an unprecedented quarantine measure. Bryan made arrangements with the steamship companies and the city of Boston to use Deer and Rainsford Islands as emergency detention centers while Gallops Island was used to bathe infested persons, sterilize their clothing, and hospitalize the sick. [9] Bryan remained in command until July 29, 1921 when his duties were assumed by Dr. Paul Preble.  

William Minor Bryan passed away on October 5, 1934.

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[1] Cunningham, S.A., Confederate Veteran, Volume 26, January 1918, Nashville, TN, p. 168

[2] Annual Report of the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1909, p. 108

[3] Annual Report of the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1910, p. 95; Annual Report of the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1911; Annual Report of the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1912, p. 76

[4] Annual Report of the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1914, p.59

[5] Annual Report of the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1915, p. 133  

[6] Annual Report of the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, 1917, p. 55

[7] Annual Report of the Surgeon General for FY 1919 pp. 116-117

[8] Annual Report of the Surgeon General for FY 1920, pp. 136-137

[9] Annual Report of the Surgeon General for FY 1921 pp. 171-172