John Stearns

John Stearns (1770 – 1848) was an American physician that served as President of the Medical Society of the State of New York (MSSNY) from 1817 to 1820 and was the founding President of the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) in 1847. Education and early career John Stearns was born in 1770 to a physician father. He attended Yale College for his undergraduate studies before working as a county doctor's apprentice. He attended the University of Pennsylvania for his medical education. Upon graduating, he moved to the town of Waterford, New York in 1793, providing rural medicine to Saratoga County's Dutch settlers. During his early career, he reported on immigrants' usage of ergot fungi to stimulate uterine contractions during childbirth, leading to widespread adoption of the practice. He also provided epidemiological surveillance of croup and influenza in Saratoga County. For this work, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Medicine by the New York State Board of Regents. His advocacy for the scientific method over empirical evidence led to county-level medical societies for sharing recent medical research and discoveries. When these groups merged into the Medical Society of the State of New York in 1807, Sterns served as its founding secretary until 1814. After representing the Eastern District in the New York State Senate from 1909 to 1913 as a member of the Federalist Party, Sterns' former patients, prominent New York politicians DeWitt Clinton and Daniel D. Tompkins, convinced him to move his practice from Albany, New York to New York City.