Salmon on Ellis Island
Salmon began his duties as Assistant Surgeon in December 1904. His duties involved conducting the line examination, examining immigrants in the registry hall, and marking them with an “X” for further interrogation. He was also involved with more extensive examinations for detained immigrants, employing different investigative methods to identify signs of disease.
Salmon was clearly irked by conditions on Ellis Island. He complained to superiors about the number of people he was required to examine in a single day, which could exceed one or two thousand. Psychiatrists had only a few seconds to examine each immigrant as they passed through the registry hall. Salmon claimed that the volume of traffic, combined with a lack of trained psychiatric personnel, led to psychiatrists losing track of detainees. In one instance, a detainee fell into New York Harbor and drowned (1). Psychiatrists, for Salmon, were not supposed to be in the business of killing people.
On November 8, 1906, Salmon walked away from the line examination.
Instantly relieved of his duties by the commanding officer, John McMullen, Salmon engaged in a back-and-forth with Public Health Service officials, claiming he had left the line examination to go help in the detention room on the verbal orders of chief surgeon George W. Stoner. Salmon also highlighted that understaffing at Ellis Island and the overflowing volume of detained immigrants resulted in the clashing priorities of staff members (2).
The higher-ups were seemingly convinced. Surgeon General Walter Wyman rescinded Salmon’s suspension with an official reprimand on November 9, 1906.
While he was in New York, Salmon lived at 128 Bard Avenue on Staten Island. Just a block away from him was Sailors' Snug Harbor, a retirement home and care facility for retired and aged sailors. Salmon, always a fan of boating and waterborne pursuits, appears to have spent some of his free time conversing and visiting with the sailors of Snug Harbor.
Coincidentally, in 1903, just as Salmon moved into the area, the Trustees of Sailors' Snug Harbor changed their policy around psychiatric care (4). Where they previously sent mariners away to a series of local mental hospitals, they now decided to treat psychiatric patients at Snug Harbor's own Sanitorium. Salmon's initial views on naval medicine may have been shaped by his close proximity to this institution, which towered over the surrounding neighborhood. In fact, a ferry ran from Snug Harbor to lower Manhattan, which could have been the way Salmon got to work.
Salmon would, after his suspension, be reassigned to the Chelsea Medical Hospital, a naval hospital just outside Boston, just a few months later in May 1907 (3). While at Chelsea, Salmon investigated the particular needs of naval medicine, advocating for the creation of a psychiatric hospital ship to serve American fishermen off the Grand Banks in Newfoundland, Canada. Salmon and his wife Helen opened their home to care for those affected by the Great Fire of Chelsea on April 12, 1908. Helen herself helped to deliver babies during this time (5).