Report of the Royal Academy of Medicine, to the Minister of the Interior, upon the cholera-morbus .
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.
John Whelan Sterling was a pioneer faculty member of the University of Wisconsin - Madison. When the first university chancellor John Hiram Lathrop opened the school in 1849, he and Sterling were the only two professors.
Background
John was born on July 17, 1816 in Blackwalnut, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, United States, a descendant of William Sterling who settled in Haverhill, Massachussets, in 1662. He was one of twenty children of Daniel Sterling, lumberman and government contractor, by the last two of three wives, his mother being the third wife, Rachel (Brooks) Sterling.
Education
Educated in the public school of his town and the academies of Hamilton and Homer, New York, he read law for two years in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, after which he entered the sophomore year of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) and graduated there with honors in 1840.
Career
In 1841 Sterlin entered the Princeton Theological Seminary and during his three years there officiated as tutor in the College of New Jersey. He spent about a year as Presbyterian missionary in the Pennsylvania county in which he was born, taught in Carroll College, newly established under Presbyterian auspices at Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 1846, and in 1847 opened a private school in Waukesha.
Early in 1849 he became professor of mathematics, natural philosophy, and astronomy at the University of Wisconsin, and principal of the preparatory department. For about two years thereafter he and his preparatory school pupils, with the chancellor, formed the faculty and student body of the infant university.
After the resignation of the first chancellor, John Hiram Lathrop, which took effect in January 1859, the internal administration of the university till the installation in July 1859 of the new chancellor, Henry Barnard, was largely in the hands of Sterling, whom the regents made acting chancellor.
Because of Barnard's ill health and frequent absence he continued to take much of the administrative responsibility until 1860, when Barnard's chancellorship came to an end, and during the next seven years, when the university was without a chancellor, he was the chief administrative officer, dean till 1865 and thereafter vice-chancellor.
In the reorganization of the faculty under Paul Ansel Chadbourne in 1867, he was one of three retained from the old professional group, his title being professor of natural philosophy and astronomy. After Chadbourne resigned in 1870, the routine of administration was again placed in his capable hands, where it remained till the appointment of a new president a year later. The regents had conferred on him in 1869 the office and title of vice-president, which he held to the time of his death.
In 1874 he became professor of mathematics; in 1883 professor emeritus. When his health weakened in 1874 under his double load of administration and teaching, he was given a six months' leave of absence, three months of which he spent in Europe.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Personality
Characteristic of him were deep piety, unfailing kindliness, high standards of scholarship, great energy, and steadfast faith that, as he declared in a commencement address, his university would some day be "the chief pride of the state and its glory abroad. "
Connections
On September 3, 1851, he had married Harriet Dean, daughter of Eliot Byram Dean of Raynham, Massachussets. He was survived by his wife and three of their eight children. Their daughter Susan Adelaide Sterling graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1879, and after graduate school and other career development, was named assistant professor of German at UW in 1900.