My early memory is when I was a kid they were drafting 18 year olds and sending them to Vietnam. 15 years before that they were sending young men to Korea. And before that 10 million men to Europe and the Pacific.

If you want something more related in 1948 or some such there was a small outbreak of smallpox in New York. And they vaccinated 80% of the city in a couple of months.

Speaks to me that while the state has and always had had these powers it's become loath to use them.