John Stearns, 1770


John Stearns was an US physician.

Biography

His father was a physician and he was educated at Yale College, followed by an internship in a doctor’s office on the countryside. He studied medicine at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and in 1793 he settled as a physician in Waterford.
Together with two friends, he founded a Society for combating empiricism and quackery, which in 1806 totalled 20 regional Societies who were united in 1807 in a Federal Society. Stearns was secretary and later president of that Federal Society. From 1810 to 1813 he was sent to the State legislature in Albany. In 1813 he settled as a physician in New York City.

Selected publications