Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1118

NAME STERNBERG 1096 STERNBERG Hartwick Seminary, New York State, he tracing descent from German settlers from the Palatinate in 1703. His mother was Margaret Levering Miller, daughter of Rev. George B. Miller, professor of theology in the seminary. George, the oldest of a family of ten, was born in Hartwick June 8, 1838, was educated at the seminary and began teaching school at New Germantown, New Jersey, at the age of sixteen, for he was to be responsible for his own education from this time. At nine- teen he began the study of medicine with Dr. Horace Lathrop at Cooperstown, N. Y., and subsequently, with borrowed money, at- tended the College of Physicians and Surgeons. New York City, graduating with the class of 1860 and practising in Elizabeth City, N. J., until the outbreak of the Civil War. Being appointed assistant surgeon in the United States Army and assigned to duty with the Third Infantry he received a baptism of fire at the first battle of Bull Run and was taken prisoner, making his escape, however, and reporting for duty. He went through the battles of Gaines Hill and Malvern Hill and in 1862 fell ill with typhoid fever while at Harrison's Landing and nearly lost his hfe. On recovery he was assigned to duty at Ports- mouth Grove, Rhode Island, and at the close of the war had the rank of medical director and was in charge of the government hospital al Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Sternberg continued in the medical service of the government and was stationed in many parts of the country, having seen an unusual amount of active serv- ice on the battlefield and in Indian campaigns. He was at Fort Harker, Kansas, in 1867, dur- ing the cholera epidemic, losing his dearly loved wife from this disease. Later he was post surgeon at Fort Columbus, New York (1871), when yellow fever gained a foothold among the troops. He was post surgeon at Barrancas, Florida, when there were epidemics of yellow fever in 1873 and 1875, losing his health and being invalided home after the latter epidemic. In 1879 he was a member of the Havana yellow fever commission. In May, 1893, he was acting as attending sur- geon and consulting bacteriologist to New York City when he was appointed surgeon- general of the U. S. Army, a position he held until retired at the age, limit, June 8, 1902. Special duties were assigned to Sternberg from time to time as his services became valu- able to the government because of his train- ing and experience in epidemiology. He was a delegate from the United States to the In- ternational Sanitary Conference at Rome, 1885. and detailed by act of Congress in 1887 to make investigations in Brazil, Mexico and Cuba relating to the etiology and prevention of yellow fever. His first publication of sci- entific value was "An Inquiry into the Modus Operandi of the Yellow Fever Poison," pub- lished in the New Orleans Medical and Sur- gical Journal in 1875, following his observa- tions of the Barrancas epidemics. Four years later he was secretary of the Havana yellow fever commission of the National Board of Health, in the meantime having published a paper on the study of the natural history of yellow fever in the same journal, 1876-77. Soon he issued a paper on the diagnosis of that disease and then followed a long series of articles in the medical press of the coun- try and in the publications of the government on bacteriology, disinfection, infectious dis- eases, a total bibliography of 143 titles, the last being an article on yellow fever for the "Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine," 1903. The etiology of yellow fever engaged the attention of Sternberg for some ten years after 1879. His investigations disproved the causative relation of "Cryptococcus Xantho- genicus" of Domingos Freire, of Brazil, and likewise Sanarelli's "Bacillus Icteroides." Major Walter Reed (q. v.), having confirmed the finding, Dr. Sternberg organized the Yel- low Fever Commission in 1900, with Major Reed Chairman and Dr. Carroll (q. v.). Dr. Lazear (q. v.), and Dr. Agramonte as mem- bers, and then followed the demonstration that mosquitoes of the genus Stegomyia carry the specific infectious agent of this dread dis- ease. Dr. Sternberg should have the credit of making possible this great discovery by his preliminary work in eliminating errors of technique and in overthrowing the claims of other bacteriologists to the discovery of the specific organism, and further, in organizing and in making effective the commission that made the discovery. In 1878, while stationed at 'alla Walla, Washington, he began his experiments to de- termine the practical value of distinfectants, ■ using putrefactive bacteria as the test of • germicidal activity. These experiments were continued in Washington. D. C, and in the laboratories of the Johns Hopkins Llniversity, under the auspices of the American Public Health Association. For these Sternberg re- ceived the "Lomb prize" in 1886, the essay being revised in 1899 and translated into sev- eral foreign languages. Scientific disinfec- tion may be said to have begun with the labors of Koch and Sternberg.