Page "George Miller Sternberg" Paragraph 11

In 1880, the Commission concluded that the solution of yellow fever causality must await further progress in the new science of bacteriology.

Sternberg was soon sent to New Orleans to investigate the conflicting discoveries of Plasmodium malariae by Alphonse Laveran, and of Bacillus malariae by Edwin Klebs and Corrado Tommasi-Crudeli.

His report ( 1881 ) declared that the Bacillus malariae had no part in the causation of malaria.

The same year — simultaneously with Louis Pasteur — he announced the discovery of the pneumococcus, eventually recognized as the pathogenic agent of lobar pneumonia.

He was the first in the United States to demonstrate the Plasmodium organism as cause of malaria ( 1885 ) and the to confirm the causitive roles of the bacilli of tuberculosis and typhoid fever ( 1886 ).

He was the first scientist to produce photomicrographs of the tubercule bacillus.

He was also the earliest American pioneer in the related field of disinfection in which he began with experiments ( 1878 ) with putrefactive bacteria.

This work was continued in Washington and in the laboratories of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, under the auspices of the American Public Health Association.

For his essay " Disinfection and Individual Prophylaxis against Infectious Diseases " ( 1886 ), later translated into several languages, he was awarded the Lomb Prize.

He oversaw creation the US Army enlisted hospital corps (" medics ") in 1887.