Editing Rupert Blue (section)

===World War I===
[[File:Rupert Blue 3.jpg|thumb|upright|Rupert Blue during his tenure as US Surgeon General]]
After the United States officially entered [[World War I]] on 3 April 1917, Blue oversaw a dramatic short-term expansion of PHS duties without the benefit of increased appropriations. The military draft underway by July 1917 meant the movement of hundreds of thousands of draftees to temporary encampments around the country, with few provisions for public health by the [[United States Department of War|War Department]] or state health departments. In response, PHS established venereal disease control programs with funding from the [[Red Cross]], provided industrial hygiene and health services for the thousands of workers laboring in war plants and the communities surrounding them, emptied swamps and sprayed for mosquitoes to prevent malaria, and built sanitary privies. Back in [[Washington, D.C.]], the Hygienic Laboratory produced vaccines against [[tetanus]], [[diphtheria]], [[typhoid]], and [[smallpox]]. Blue's public health infrastructure was up and running by the time that Congressional support came, in the form of earmarked dollars and a statute covering the control and prevention of venereal disease (the [[Chamberlain–Kahn Act|Chamberlain Act of 1918]]). 

During World War I, under SG Rupert Blue, cigarettes were issued as part of each fighting man's basic [[field ration]]s kit.<ref>[http://discovermagazine.com/2007/oct/20-things-you-didn2019t-know-about-the-surgeon-general 20 Things You Didn't Know About... The Surgeon General | Health Policy | DISCOVER Magazine<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
[[File:Spanish influenza, three-day fever, the flu.jpg|left|thumb|325x325px|''"Spanish Influenza" "Three-day Fever" "The Flu"'' written by Dr. Blue of the [[United States Public Health Service]] on 28 September 1918]]
Recruiting and retaining physicians during wartime was a challenge to PHS, a situation made worse by the global [[Spanish flu|Spanish influenza pandemic]] that reached the United States in September 1918. Blue had applauded President Wilson's Executive Order making PHS an arm of the military (issued in April 1917 and repealed in 1921), and subsequent moves to set officers’ pay and benefits on a par with those of the armed forces, but did not see passage of legislation creating a PHS Reserve Corps until October 1918, well into the flu pandemic. Pressure to add staff also came from Congress' mandate (1917) that PHS provide health services for disabled and, as of March 1919, all World War One veterans, through a new Bureau of War Risk Insurance in the Treasury Department. Over the following year, PHS assembled a network of fourteen district offices and transformed war surplus facilities into hospitals and clinics, scrambling for staff and resources to stretch the $10.5&nbsp;million given by Congress to fund the new program. 

Given his tenure during this period, it may not come as a surprise that Blue advocated enacting national health insurance, then known as universal sickness insurance, as part of an overall Federal public health strategy. Blue spoke not only as Surgeon General and on behalf of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers but also as President of the American Medical Association (1916–17).

A change in leadership at the Department of the Treasury, PHS' home, may have led to Blue's decision to step down from his posting as Surgeon General on 9 March 1920. He resumed the rank of Assistant Surgeon General and was assigned to Paris, France, to oversee PHS operations in Europe and to serve as U.S. delegate to the [[Office international d'hygiène publique|Office International d’Hygiene Public]] (1920–1923) and subsequently to the League of Nations. 

After a full career at PHS, Blue retired from PHS on 1 December 1932. He was advanced to the rank of [[Vice admiral (United States)|Vice Admiral]] in 1942. He died on 12 April 1948, in [[Charleston, South Carolina]].