with Dr. Horace Lathrop, in Cooperstown, N. Y. Afterward he attended
the courses of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York,
and was graduated thence in the class of 1860. Before he had fairly
settled in practice the civil war began, and the attention of all
young Americans was directed toward the military service. Among these
was young Dr. Sternberg, who, having passed the examination, was
appointed assistant surgeon May 28, 1861, and was attached to the
command of General Sykes, Army of the Potomac. He was engaged in the
battle of Bull Run, where, voluntarily remaining on the field with
the wounded, he was taken prisoner, but was paroled to continue his
humane work. On the expiration of his parole he made his way through
the lines and reported at Washington for duty July 30, 1861--"weary,
footsore, and worn." Of his conduct in later campaigns of the Army of
the Potomac, General Sykes, in his official reports of the battles of
Gaines Mill, Turkey Ridge, and Malvern Hill, said that "Dr. Sternberg
added largely to the reputation already acquired on the disastrous
field of Bull Run." He remained with General Sykes's command till
August, 1862; was then assigned to hospital duty at Portsmouth Grove,
R. I., till November, 1862; was afterward attached to General Banks's
expedition as assistant to the medical director in the Department
of the Gulf till January, 1864; was in the office of the medical
director, Columbus, Ohio, and in charge of the United States General
Hospital at Cleveland, Ohio, till July, 1865. Since the civil war he
has been assigned successively to Jefferson Barracks, Mo.; Fort Harker
and Fort Riley, Kansas; in the field in the Indian campaign, 1868
to 1870; Forts Columbus and Hamilton, New York Harbor; Fort Warren,
Boston Harbor; Department of the Gulf and New Orleans; Fort Barrancas,
Fla.; Department of the Columbia; Department Headquarters; Fort Walla
Walla, Washington Territory; California; and Eastern stations. He was
promoted to be captain and assistant surgeon in 1866, major and surgeon
in 1875, lieutenant colonel and deputy surgeon general in 1891, and
brigadier general and surgeon general in 1893. He has also received the
brevets of captain and major in the United States Army "for faithful
and meritorious services during the war," and of lieutenant colonel
"for gallant service in performance of his professional duty under fire
in action against Indians at Clearwater, Idaho, July 12, 1877." In
the discharge of his duties at his various posts Dr. Sternberg had to
deal with a cholera epidemic in Kansas in 1867, with a "yellow-fever
epidemic" in New York Harbor in 1871, and with epidemics of yellow
fever at Fort Barrancas, Fla., in 1873 and 1875. He served under
special detail as member and secretary of the Havana Yellow-Fever
Commission of the National Board of Health, 1879 to 1881; as a delegate
from the United States under special instructions of the Secretary of
State to the International Sanitary Conference at Rome in 1885; as a
commissioner, under the act of Congress of March 3, 1887, to make
investigations in Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba relating to the etiology and
prevention of yellow fever; by special request of the health officer of
the port of New York and the advisory committee of the New York Chamber
of Commerce as consulting bacteriologist to the health officer of the
port of New York in 1892; and he was a delegate to the International
Medical Congress in Moscow in 1897.
Dr. Sternberg has contributed largely to the literature of scientific
medicine from the results of his observations and experiments which he
has made in these various spheres of duty.
His most fruitful researches have been made in the field of
bacteriology and infectious diseases. He has enjoyed the rare advantage
in pursuing these studies of having the material for his experiments
close at hand in the course of his regular work, and of watching, we
might say habitually, the progress of such diseases as yellow fever
as it normally went on in the course of Nature. Of the quality of his
bacteriological work, the writer of a biography in Red Cross Notes,
reprinted in the North American Medical Review, goes so far as to say
that "when the overzeal of enthusiasts shall have passed away, and the
story of bacteriology in the nineteenth century is written up, it will
probably be found that the chief who brought light out of darkness
was George M. Sternberg. He was noted not so much for his brilliant
discoveries, but rather for his exact methods of investigation, for
his clear statements of the results of experimental data, for his
enormous labors toward the perfection and simplification of technique,
and finally for his services in the practical application of the
truths taught by the science. His early labors in bacteriology were
made with apparatus and under conditions that were crude enough." His
work in this department is certainly among the most important that
has been done. Its value has been freely acknowledged everywhere, it
has given him a world-wide fame, and it has added to the credit of
American science. The reviewer in Nature (June 22, 1893) of his Manual
of Bacteriology, which was published in 1892, while a little disposed
to criticise the fullness and large size of the book, describes it as
"the latest, the largest, and, let us add, the most complete manual
of bacteriology which has yet appeared in the English language. The
volume combines in itself not only an account of such facts as are
already established in the science from a morphological, chemical,
and pathological point of view, discussions on such abstruse subjects
as susceptibility and immunity, and also full details of the means by
which these results have been obtained, and practical directions for
the carrying on of laboratory work." This was not the first of Dr.
Sternberg's works in bacteriological research. It was preceded by a
work on Bacteria, of 498 pages, including 152 pages translated from
the work of Dr. Antoine Magnin (1884); Malaria and Malarial Diseases,
and Photomicrographs and How to make Them. The manual is at once a
book for reference, a text-book for students, and a handbook for the
laboratory. Its four parts include brief notices of the history of
the subject, classification, morphology, and an account of methods
and practical laboratory work--"all clear and concise"; the biology
and chemistry of bacteria, disinfection, and antiseptics; a detailed
account of pathogenic bacteria, their modes of action, the way they
may gain access to the system, susceptibility and immunity, to which
Dr. Sternberg's own contributions have been not the least important;
and saprophytic bacteria in water, in the soil, in or on the human
body, and in food, the whole number of saprophytes described being
three hundred and thirty-one. "The merit of a work of this kind,"
Nature says, "depends not less on the number of species described than
on the clearness and accuracy of the descriptions, and Dr. Sternberg
has spared no pains to make these as complete as possible." The
bibliography in this work fills more than a hundred pages, and contains
2,582 references. A later book on a kindred subject is Immunity,
Protective Inoculations, and Serum Therapy (1895). Dr. Sternberg has
also published a Text-Book of Bacteriology.
Bearing upon yellow fever are the Report upon the Prevention of Yellow
Fever by Inoculation, submitted in March, 1888; Report upon the
Prevention of Yellow Fever, illustrated by photomicrographs and cuts,
1890; and Examination of the Blood in Yellow Fever (experiments upon
animals, etc.), in the Preliminary Report of the Havana Yellow-Fever
Commission, 1879. Other publications in the list of one hundred and
thirty-one titles of Dr. Sternberg's works, and mostly consisting
of shorter articles, relate to Disinfectants and their Value, the
Etiology of Malarial Fevers, Septicæmia, the Germicide Value of
Therapeutic Agents, the Etiology of Croupous Pneumonia, the Bacillus
of Typhoid Fever, the Thermal Death Point of Pathogenic Organisms,
the Practical Results of Bacteriological Researches, the Cholera
Spirillum, Disinfection at Quarantine Stations, the Infectious Agent
of Smallpox, official reports as Surgeon General of the United States
Army, addresses and reports at the meetings of the American Public
Health Association, and an address to the members of the Pan-American
Congress. One paper is recorded quite outside of the domain of microbes
and fevers, to show what the author might have done if he had allowed
his attention to be diverted from his special absorbing field of work.
It is upon the Indian Burial Mounds and Shell Heaps near Pensacola, Fla.
The medical and scientific societies of which Dr. Sternberg is a
member include the American Public Health Association, of which he is
also an ex-president (1886); the American Association of Physicians;
the American Physiological Society; the American Microscopical
Society, of which he is a vice-president; the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, of which he is a Fellow; the New
York Academy of Medicine (a Fellow); and the Association of Military
Surgeons of the United States (president in 1896). He is a Fellow
of the Royal Microscopical Society of London; an honorary member
of the Epidemiological Society of London, of the Royal Academy of
Medicine of Rome, of the Academy of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro, of
the American Academy of Medicine, of the French Society of Hygiene,
etc.; was President of the Section on Military Medicine and Surgery of
the Pan-American Congress; was a Fellow by courtesy in Johns Hopkins
University, 1885 to 1890; was President of the Biological Society
of Washington in 1896, and of the American Medical Association in
1897; and has been designated Honorary President of the Thirteenth
International Medical Congress, which is to meet in Paris in 1900. He
received the degree of LL. D. from the University of Michigan in 1894,
and from Brown University in 1897.
Dr. Sternberg's view of the right professional standard of the
physician is well expressed in the sentiment, "To maintain our
standing in the estimation of the educated classes we must not rely
upon our diplomas or upon our membership in medical societies. Work
and worth are what count." He does not appear to be attached to any
particular school, but, as his Red Cross Notes biographer says, "has
placed himself in the crowd 'who have been moving forward upon the
substantial basis of scientific research, and who, if characterized by
any distinctive name, should be called _the New School of Scientific
Medicine_.' He holds that if our practice was in accordance with our
knowledge many diseases would disappear; he sees no room for creeds
or patents in medicine. He is willing to acknowledge the right to
prescribe either a bread pill or a leaden bullet. But if a patient
dies from diphtheria because of a failure to administer a proper
remedy, or if infection follows from dirty fingers or instruments,
if a practitioner carelessly or ignorantly transfers infection, he
believes he is not fit to practice medicine.... He rejects every theory
or dictum that has not been clearly demonstrated to him as an absolute
truth."
While he is described as without assumption, Dr. Sternberg is
represented as being evidently in his headquarters as surgeon general
in every sense the head of the service, the chief whose will governs
all. Modest and unassuming, he is described as being most exacting, a
man of command, of thorough execution, a general whose eyes comprehend
every detail, and who has studied the personality of every member
of his corps. He is always busy, but seemingly never in a hurry;
systematic, accepting no man's dictum, and taking nothing as an
established fact till he has personal experimental evidence of its
truth. He looks into every detail, and takes equal care of the health
of the general in chief and of the private.
His addresses are carefully prepared, based on facts he has
himself determined, made in language so plain that they will not
be misunderstood, free from sentiment, and delivered in an easy
conversational style, and his writings are "pen pictures of his results
in the laboratory and clinic room."
* * * * *
The thirty-first year of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology
and Ethnology was signalized by the transfer of its property to
the corporation of Harvard College, whereby simplicity and greater
permanence have been given to its management. The four courses of
instruction in the museum were attended by sixteen students, and
these, with others, make twenty-one persons, besides the curator, who
are engaged in study or special research in subjects included under
the term anthropology. Special attention is given by explorers in
the service of the museum to the investigation of the antiquities of
Yucatan and Central America, of which its publications on Copan, the
caves of Loltun, and Labná, have been noticed in the Monthly. These
explorations have been continued when and where circumstances made it
feasible. Among the gifts acknowledged in the report of the museum are
two hundred facsimile copies of the Aztec Codex Vaticanus, from the
Duke of Loubat, an original Mexican manuscript of 1531, on agave paper,
from the Mary Hemenway estate; the extensive private archæological
collection of Mr. George W. Hammond; articles from Georgia mounds,
from Clarence B. Moore, and other gifts of perhaps less magnitude but
equal interest. Mr. Andrew Gibb, of Edinburgh, has given five pieces
of rudely made pottery from the Hebrides, which were made several
years ago by a woman who is thought to have been the last one to make
pottery according to the ancient method of shaping the clay with the
hands, and without the use of any form of potter's wheel. Miss Maria
Whitney, sister of the late Prof. J. D. Whitney, has presented the
"Calaveras skull" and the articles found with it, and all the original
documents relating to its discovery and history. Miss Phebe Ferris,
of Madisonville, Ohio, has bequeathed to the museum about twenty-five
acres of land, on which is situated the ancient mound where Dr. Metz
and Curator Putnam have investigated for several years, and whence a
considerable collection has been obtained. Miss Ferris expressed the
desire that the museum continue the explorations, and after completing
convert the tract into a public park. Mr. W. B. Nicker has explored
some virgin mounds near Galena, Ill., and a rock shelter and stone
grave near Portage, Ill. The library of the museum now contains 1,838
volumes and 2,479 pamphlets on anthropology.
Correspondence.
DO ANIMALS REASON?
_Editor Popular Science Monthly:_
DEAR SIR: In connection with the discussion of the interesting subject
Do Animals Reason? permit me to relate the following incident in
support of the affirmative side of the question:
Some years ago, before the establishment of the National Zoölogical
Park in this city, Dr. Frank Baker, the curator, kept a small nucleus
of animals in the rear of the National Museum; among this collection
were several monkeys. On a hot summer day, as I was passing the monkey
cage I handed to one of the monkeys a large piece of fresh molasses
taffy. The animal at once carried it to his mouth and commenced to bite
it. The candy was somewhat soft, and stuck to the monkey's paws. He
looked at his paws, licked them with his tongue, and then turned his
head from side to side looking about the cage. Then, taking the candy
in his mouth, he sprang to the farther end of the cage and picked up
a wad of brown paper. This ball of paper he carefully unfolded, and,
laying it down on the floor of the cage, carefully smoothed out the
folds of the paper with both paws. After he had smoothed it out to his
satisfaction, he took the piece of taffy from his mouth and laid it in
the center of the piece of paper and folded the paper over the candy,
leaving a part of it exposed. He then sat back on his haunches and ate
the candy, first wiping one paw and then the other on his hip, just as
any boy or man might do.
If that monkey did not show reason, what would you call it?
Yours etc., H. O. HALL, _Library Surgeon General's Office, United
States Army._ WASHINGTON, D. C., _October 2, 1899_.
Editor's Table.
_HOME BURDENS._
The doctrine has gone abroad, suggested by the most popular poet of
the day, that "white men" have the duty laid upon them of scouring the
dark places of the earth for burdens to take up. Through a large part
of this nation the idea has run like wildfire, infecting not a few
who themselves are in no small degree burdens to the community that
shelters them. The rowdier element of the population everywhere is
strongly in favor of the new doctrine, which to their minds is chiefly
illustrated by the shooting of Filipinos. We do not say that thousands
of very respectable citizens are not in favor of it also; we only note
that they are strongly supported by a class whose adhesion adds no
strength to their cause.
It is almost needless to remark that a very few years ago we were
not in the way of thinking that the civilized nations of the earth,
which had sliced up Asia and Africa in the interest of their trade,
had done so in the performance of a solemn duty. The formula "the
white man's burden" had not been invented then, and some of us used to
think that there was more of the filibustering spirit than of a high
humanitarianism in these raids upon barbarous races. Possibly we did
less than justice to some of the countries concerned, notably Great
Britain, which, having a teeming population in very narrow confines,
and being of old accustomed to adventures by sea, had naturally been
led to extend her influence and create outlets for her trade in distant
parts of the earth. Be this as it may, we seemed to have our own work
cut out for us at home. We had the breadth of a continent under our
feet, rich in the products of every latitude; we had unlimited room for
expansion and development; we had unlimited confidence in the destinies
that awaited us as a nation, if only we applied ourselves earnestly
to the improvement of the heritage which, in the order of Providence,
had become ours. We thanked Heaven that we were not as other nations,
which, insufficiently provided with home blessings, were tempted to put
forth their hands and--steal, or something like it, in heathen lands.
Well, we have changed all that: we give our sympathy to the nations
of the Old World in their forays on the heathen, and are vigorously
tackling "the white man's burden" according to the revised version.
It is unfortunate and quite unpleasant that this should involve
shooting down people who are only asking what our ancestors asked and
obtained--the right of self-government in the land they occupy. Still,
we must do it if we want to keep up with the procession we have joined.
Smoking tobacco is not pleasant to the youth of fifteen or sixteen who
has determined to line up with his elders in that manly accomplishment.
He has many a sick stomach, many a flutter of the heart, before he
breaks himself into it; but, of course, he perseveres--has he not taken
up the white boy's burden? So we. Who, outside of that rowdy element to
which we have referred, has not been, whether he has confessed it or
not, sick at heart at the thought of the innocent blood we have shed
and of the blood of our kindred that we have shed in order to shed that
blood? Still, spite of all misgivings and qualms, we hold our course,
Kipling leading on, and the colonel of the Rough Riders assuring us
that it is all right.
Revised versions are not always the best versions; and for our own
part we prefer to think that the true "white man's burden" is that
which lies at his own door, and not that which he has to compass land
and sea to come in sight of. We have in this land the burden of a not
inconsiderable tramp and hoodlum population. This is a burden of which
we can never very long lose sight; it is more or less before us every
day. It is a burden in a material sense, and it is a burden in what
we may call a spiritual sense. It impairs the satisfaction we derive
from our own citizenship, and it lies like a weight on the social
conscience. It is the opprobrium alike of our educational system and
of our administration of the law. How far would the national treasure
and individual energy which we have expended in failing to subdue
the Filipino "rebels" have gone--if wisely applied--in subduing the
rebel elements in our own population, and rescuing from degradation
those whom our public schools have failed to civilize? Shall the reply
be that we can not interfere with individual liberty? It would be
a strange reply to come from people who send soldiers ten thousand
miles away for the express purpose of interfering with liberty as the
American nation has always hitherto understood that term; but, in
point of fact, there is no question of interfering with any liberty
that ought to be respected. It is a question of the protection of
public morals, of public decency, and of the rights of property. It is
a question of the rescue of human beings--our fellow-citizens--from
ignorance, vice, and wretchedness. It is a question of making us as
a nation right with ourselves, and making citizenship under our flag
something to be prized by every one entitled to claim it.
It is not in the cities only that undesirable elements cluster. The
editor of a lively little periodical, in which many true things are
said with great force--The Philistine--has lately declared that his own
village, despite the refining influences radiated from the "Roycroft
Shop," could furnish a band of hoodlum youths that could give points in
every form of vile behavior to any equal number gathered from a great
city. He hints that New England villages may be a trifle better, but
that the farther Western States are decidedly worse. It is precisely
in New England, however, that a bitter cry on this very subject of
hoodlumism has lately been raised. What are we to do about it?
Manifestly the hoodlum or incipient tramp is one of two things: either
he is a person whom a suitable education might have turned into some
decent and honest way of earning a living, or he is a person upon whom,
owing to congenital defect, all educational effort would have been
thrown away. In either case social duty seems plain. If education would
have done the work, society--seeing that it has taken the business of
public education in hand--should have supplied the education required
for the purpose, even though the amount of money available for waging
war in the Philippines had been slightly reduced. If the case is one
in which no educational effort is of avail, then, as the old Roman
formula ran, "Let the magistrates see that the republic takes no harm."
Before, therefore, our minds can be easy on this hoodlum question,
we must satisfy ourselves thoroughly that our modes of education are
not, positively or negatively, adapted to making the hoodlum variety
of character. The hoodlum, it is safe to say, is an individual in whom
no intellectual interest has ever been awakened, in whom no special
capacity has ever been created. His moral nature has never been taught
to respond to any high or even respectable principle of conduct. If
there is any glory in earth or heaven, any beauty or harmony in the
operations of natural law, any poetry or pathos or dignity in human
life, anything to stir the soul in the records of human achievement,
to all such things he is wholly insensible. Ought this to be so in
the case of any human being, not absolutely abnormal, whom the state
has undertaken to educate? If, as a community, we put our hands to
the educational plow, and so far not only relieve parents of a large
portion of their sense of responsibility, but actually suppress the
voluntary agencies that would otherwise undertake educational work,
surely we should see to it that our education educates. Direct moral
instruction in the schools is not likely to be of any great avail
unless, by other and indirect means, the mind is prepared to receive
it. What is needed is to awaken a sense of capacity and power, to give
to each individual some trained faculty and some direct and, as far as
it goes, scientific cognizance of things. Does any one suppose that
a youth who had gone through a judicious course of manual training,
or one who had become interested in any such subject as botany,
chemistry, or agriculture, or who even had an intelligent insight
into the elementary laws of mechanics, could develop into a hoodlum?
On the other hand, there is no difficulty in imagining that such a
development might take place in a youth who had simply been plied
with spelling-book, grammar, and arithmetic. Even what seem the most
interesting reading lessons fall dead upon minds that have no hold upon
the reality of things, and no sense of the distinctions which the most
elementary study of Nature forces on the attention.