Maria as a field nurse. His maternal uncle may have been the pioneering microbiologist Constantin Levaditi; on his paternal side, Eraclie was the nephew of actors Aristide Demetriade and Aristizza Romanescu, and of poet Mircea Demetriade. The Sterians were widely thought of as Jewish, and, more specifically, Eraclie was rumored to have been baptized a Christian from Judaism. The family rejected such claims. Eraclie left Galați as a child and moved with his family to Craiova, where he would later graduate from Carol I National College, in the same class as mathematician Gheorghe Țițeica. From 1891 to 1897, he took courses at the University of Bucharest medical school, and then was an intern at Brâncovenesc Hospital. As a member of the Medical Students' Society from 1892, he gave lectures on the treatment of gonorrhea and the state of physician–patient privilege. In May 1897, he became a Doctor of Medicine with a thesis on aspergillosis, following up with papers on malaria (1899) and tuberculosis transmission (1902); he also edited for print I. T. Thomescu's courses on pathology and internal medicine, and lectured at the Romanian Atheneum on the prevention of gout. Settling in Bucharest, where he briefly put out the magazine Spitalul ("The Hospital"), Sterian married Alexandrina Gulimănescu, daughter of a florist from Pitești. Together, they had four children, including sons Paul (born 1904) and Constantin. Their home by 1912 was on Bibescu-Vodă Street, 22. In parallel to his work in conventional medicine, Sterian was becoming a follower of Sebastian Kneipp's water cures. He published his own introduction on the subject, including a biography of Kneipp, in 1904. In 1903, he relaunched his work in medical journalism with a review called Tribuna Sănătăței ("Health Tribune"), and then involved himself in public debates over the medical implications of wearing corsets. By late 1904, he was arguing, against Dimitrie Gerota, that corsets were not harmful in themselves. From November 1, 1905, to May 7, 1911, Sterian put out a weekly magazine, first as Medicina Populară ("Popular Medicine"), then as Medicul Poporului ("People's Physician"). He began writing occasional articles for Familia, including a 1906 piece on life extension, advertising iodine-based cures. By 1905, Sterian and his Demetriade uncle had joined the circle of Symbolist writers and connoisseurs formed around Alexandru Macedonski. Sterian's various opinion pieces were published under pseudonyms: Ester (in Macedonski's Liga Conservatoare), Est, and Ilcare. Sterian's popularization of health subjects earned him