Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/385

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GEORGE MILLER STERNBERG
323

the performance of his professional duty under fire in the action against the Indians at Clearwater, Idaho"; and served as post surgeon at Fort Walla Walla until 1879, when he was placed upon the yellow fever commission of the national board of health and sent to Havana, Cuba. In 1885 he was a delegate to the international sanitary conference at Rome, Italy. President Cleveland appointed him as an expert to make investigations in Brazil, Mexico and Cuba relating to the etiology and prevention of yellow fever by inoculation, and he spent two years in this investigation (1887-89). He was appointed deputy surgeon-general, January 12, 1891, and brigadier-general and surgeon-general, United States army, May 30, 1893. He was a delegate to the international medical congress at Moscow, Russia, August 19-26, 1897; directed the medical department of the United States army during the war with Spain, 1898; and addressed the American medical association on the "Sanitary Lessons of the War" June 8, 1899. He was retired from the United States army by operation of law on his sixty-fourth birthday, June 8, 1902.

He was elected president of the American public health association in 1886, of the American medical association in 1897, and of the Association of Military Surgeons in 1900. During his administration of the medical department of the army he established the army medical school and the hospital for tuberculosis cases at Fort Bayard, New Mexico; greatly improved the military hospitals, and made the service especially efficacious during the war with Spain both on land and on the sea by the use of hospital ships. Through investigations made under his direction the important discovery that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitos was made in 1898. He found his inspiration to work hard to gain an education and to continue to work hard through his entire career, in his desire to succeed in adding something to the store of human knowledge. His tastes for scientific studies he inherited from his father. His most helpful reading was history, biography, geology and natural history; and his recreation he found in his garden and at the billiard table. To young men he says: "Practise self reliance, have right ideals of duty and honor, love truth, and be assured that perseverance and industry will infallibly lead to success." He was married in 1866, to Maria Louisa, daughter of Robert and Louisa (Armstrong) Russell, of Cooperstown, New York. She died of cholera in Fort Harker, Kansas, in 1867; and he was married September 1, 1869, to Martha L., daughter of Thomas