This manual is for the guidance of medical officers of the Public Health Service and others concerned with examining aliens either in foreign countries or in the continental United States, its territories, and its possessions. It is not a medical textbook;1 it is intended to serve as a source of information on special procedures involved in interpreting and administering the Regulations for the Medical Examination of Aliens as promulgated by the Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service and approved by the Administrator of the Federal Security Agency. Persons using this manual should be thoroughly familiar with those regulations, which are reproduced in appendix A for convenient reference. The law under authority of which the examinations are conducted includes the Public Health Service Act and the Immigration Act of 1917. The Public Health Service Act contains the following provision for the physical and mental examination of aliens: SEC. 325. The Surgeon General shall provide for making, at places within the United States or in other countries, such physical and mental examinations of aliens as are required by the immigration laws, subject to administrative regulations prescribed by the Attorney General and medical regulations prescribed by the Surgeon General with the approval of the Administrator. The Immigration Act of 1917 includes the basic provisions for the medical examination of aliens arriving in the United States. Section 3 of that act (8 U. S. C. 136) specifies certain classes of inadmissible aliens, as follows: the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission into the United States: All idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons; persons who have had one or more attacks of insanity at any time previously; persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority; persons with chronic alcoholism; persons afflicted with tuberculosis in any form or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; persons not comprehended within any of the foregoing excluded classes who are found to be and are certified by ... 1 Since in the conduct of their work medical officers are likely to encounter exotic diseases, they should consult approved textbooks in order to be thoroughly familiar with the manifestations of such diseases. V |