George Miller Sternberg Brigadier General George Miller Sternberg ( June 8 , 1838 – November 3 , 1915 ) was a U . S . Army physician who is considered the first U . S . bacteriologist , having written " Manual of Bacteriology " ( 1892 ) . After he survived and yellow fever , Sternberg documented the cause of malaria ( 1881 ) , discovered the cause of lobar pneumonia ( 1881 ) , and confirmed the roles of the bacilli of tuberculosis and typhoid fever ( 1886 ) . As the 18th U . S . Army Surgeon General , from 1893 to 1902 , Sternberg led commissions to control typhoid and yellow fever , along with his subordinate Major Walter Reed . Sternberg also oversaw the establishment of the Army Medical School ( 1893 ; now the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research ) and of the U . S . Army Nurse Corps ( 1901 ) . The pioneering German bacteriologist Robert Koch honored Sternberg with the sobriquet , " Father of American Bacteriology " . Biography . Youth and education . Sternberg was born at Hartwick Seminary , Otsego County , New York , where he spent most of his childhood . His father , Levi Sternberg , a Lutheran clergyman who later became principal of Hartwick Seminary , was descended from a German family from the Palatinate , which had settled in the Schoharie Valley in the early years of the 18th century . His mother , Margaret Levering ( Miller ) Sternberg , was the daughter of George B . Miller , also a Lutheran clergyman and professor of theology at the seminary , which was a Lutheran school . He was the eldest child of a large family and he was given adult responsibilities from an early age . He interrupted his studies at the seminary with a year of work in a bookstore in Cooperstown and three years of teaching in nearby rural schools . During his last year at Hartwick he was an instructor in mathematics , chemistry , and natural philosophy . He was at the same time pursuing the study of medicine with Horace Lathrop of Cooperstown . For his formal medical training he went first to Buffalo , and later to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York ( M . D . degree , 1860 ) . After graduation he settled in Elizabeth , New Jersey to practice , remaining there until the outbreak of the Civil War . Early career . Junior Army surgeon . On May 28 , 1861 , he was appointed an Assistant Surgeon in the U . S . Army , and on July 21 of the same year was captured at the First Battle of Bull Run , while serving with General George Sykes ' division . He managed to escape and soon joined his command in the defense of Washington . He later participated in the Peninsular campaign and saw service in the battles of Gaines ' Mill and Malvern Hill . During this campaign he contracted typhoid fever while at Harrison ' s Landing and was sent north on a transport . During the remainder of the war he performed hospital duty , mostly at Portsmouth Grove , Rhode Island , and at Cleveland , Ohio . On March 13 , 1865 , he was given the Brevet s of captain and major for faithful and meritorious service . The years following the war followed the pattern of frequent moves typical of junior medical officers of the day . He married Louisa Russell , daughter of Robert Russell of Cooperstown , on October 19 , 1865 and took his bride to Jefferson Barracks , Missouri , from where he was soon transferred to Fort Harker , near Ellsworth in Kansas . Louisa did not accompany him to the latter post , but joined him in 1867 just prior to an outbreak of cholera . She was one of the first civilians to develop the disease which killed her within a few hours on July 15 and soon claimed a toll of about 75 people at the fort . Paleontology . Sternberg was promoted to captain on May 28 , 1866 and was soon sent to Fort Riley , Kansas ( December 1867 ) . With troops from this post he took part ( 1868 – 69 ) in several expeditions against hostile Cheyenne Indians along the upper Arkansas River in Indian Territory and in western Kansas . Besides his military duties , Sternberg was also interested in fossils and began collecting leaf imprints from the nearby Dakota Sandstone Formation . Some of his specimens went back East where they were studied by the famous paleobotanist , Leo Lesquereux . Sternberg also collected vertebrate fossils , including shark teeth , fish remains and mosasaur bones , from the Smoky Hill Chalk and Pierre Shale formations in western Kansas , and sent the specimens back to Washington , D . C . , where they were eventually curated in the United States National Museum ( Smithsonian Institution ) . There they were studied and later described in publications by Joseph Leidy . The type specimen of the giant Late Cretaceous fish , " Xiphactinus audax " , was collected by Dr . Sternberg . His work was also credited by Edward D . Cope and Samuel W . Williston . Sternberg was also responsible for getting his younger brother , Charles H . Sternberg , started in paleontology . Charles would later credit his older brother for getting many other paleontologists of the day interested in the fossil resources of Kansas . Sternberg served at Fort Riley until July 1870 , when be was ordered to Governors Island , New York . In the meantime , he had remarried on September 1 , 1869 , at Indianapolis , Indiana , to Martha L . Pattison , a daughter of Thomas T . N . Pattison of that city . Later career . Yellow fever . During two years at Governors Island and three ( 1872 – 75 ) at Fort Barrancas , Florida , Sternberg had frequent contacts with yellow fever patients , and at the latter post , he contracted the disease himself . He had earlier noted the efficiency of moving inhabitants out of an infested environment and successfully applied that method to the Barrancas garrison . At about this time , Sternberg published two articles in the " New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal " ( " An Inquiry into the Modus Operandi of the Yellow Fever Poison , " July 1875 , and " A Study of the Natural History of Yellow Fever , " March 1877 ) which gained him status as an authority on yellow fever . While convalescing from his bout with the disease in 1877 be was ordered to Fort Walla Walla , Washington , and later that year he participated in a campaign against the Nez Perce Indians . The spent his spare hours in study and experimentation which laid a foundation for his later work . In 1870 he perfected an anemometer and patented an automatic heat regulator which later saw wide use . On December 1 , 1875 , Sternberg was promoted major , and in April 1879 , he was ordered to Washington , D . C . , and detailed with the 1880 Havana Yellow Fever Commission . His medical colleagues on the Commission were Doctors Stanfard Chaille of New Orleans and Juan Guiteras of Havana . Sternberg was assigned to work on the problems relating to the nature and natural history of the disease and especially to its etiology ( origins ) . This involved the microscopical examination of blood and tissues in which he was one of the first to employ the newly discovered process of photomicrography . He developed high efficiency in its use . In the course of this work , he spent three months in Havana closely associated with Dr . Carlos Finlay , the main proponent of the theory of mosquito transmission of yellow fever . Bacteriology milestones . 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 photomicrograph s 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 . During the Hamburg cholera epidemic of 1892 he was detailed for duty with the New York quarantine station as a consultant on disinfection as applied to ships , their personnel , and cargo . Although some cases of the disease reached United States shores , none developed within the country . Surgeon General . Sternberg was promoted to lieutenant colonel on January 2 , 1891 . In 1892 he published his " Manual of Bacteriology " , the first exhaustive treatise on the subject produced in the United States . With the retirement of Surgeon General Sutherland ( May 1893 ) , Sternberg , along with many others , submitted his claims for consideration for the vacancy . Although hardly the seniormost officer in the Medical Corps , he was among the top dozen and was without question the most eminent professional scientist in the service . He received the appointment of Surgeon General by President Grover Cleveland on May 30 , 1893 , with promotion to the grade of brigadier general . Sternberg ' s nine - year tenure ( 1893 – 1902 ) as Surgeon General coincided with immense professional progress in the field of bacteriology as well as the occurrence of the Spanish - American War . He was responsible for the 1893 establishment of the Army Medical School ( precursor of today ' s Walter Reed Army Institute of Research ) , the organization of a contract dental service , the creation of the tuberculosis hospital at Fort Bayard , New Mexico , and of a special surgical hospital at Washington Barracks . The equipment of the medical school included laboratories of chemistry and bacteriology , and a liberal - minded policy was adopted in the supply of laboratory supplies to the larger military hospitals . With the Spanish - American War and its epidemic of typhoid fever , the problem of field hospitalization was confronted with fair success . ( He was subjected to much criticism for conditions at these hospitals , but made little reply . ) Sternberg created the Typhoid Fever Board ( 1898 ) , consisting of Majors Walter Reed , Victor C . Vaughan , and Edward O . Shakespeare , which established the facts of contact infection and fly carriage of the disease . In 1900 he organized the Yellow Fever Commission , headed by Reed , which ultimately fixed the transmission of yellow fever upon a particular species of mosquito . ( These became celebrated as the “ Walter Reed Boards ” ) . On his recommendation the first tropical disease board was also established in Manila ( January 1900 ) where it continued for about the next two years . In 1901 , Sternberg oversaw the establishment of the U . S . Army Nurse Corps . Sternberg was retired on account of age on June 8 , 1902 , and devoted the later years of his life to social welfare activities in Washington , particularly to the sanitary improvement of dwellings and to the care of tuberculous patients . Sternberg died at his home in Washington , on November 3 , 1915 . Legacy . On Sternberg ’ s monument in Arlington National Cemetery is the inscription : Pioneer American Bacteriologist , distinguished by his studies of the causation and prevention of infectious diseases , by his discovery of the microorganism causing pneumonia , and scientific investigations of yellow fever , which paved the way for the experimental demonstration of the mode of transmission of this pestilence . Veteran of three wars , breveted for bravery in action in the Civil War and the Nez Perce Wars . Served as Surgeon General of United States Army for period of nine years including the Spanish War . Founder of the Army Medical School . Scientist , author and philanthropist . M . D . , LL . D . Along with Pasteur and Koch , Sternberg is credited with first bringing the fundamental principles and techniques of the new science of bacteriology within the reach of the average physician .