Franciszek Stirba von Stirbitz came from a Czech family that arrived in Nowy Sącz in 1777 because his father took a post of district surgeon there. Having graduated fron the junior high school in Tarnów, he went to Vienna to study Medicine. He returned to Nowy Sącz in 1808. He got married and started his professional career. Each year he visited health resort Krynica in order to get better by using mineral waters. He was appointed an institution doctor of the health resort by Lviv Province in 1814. After the tragic events of the flood in 1813 he had to take care of the unsafe mineral water springs and also of rooms of the Spring Institution. In order to promote Krynica he published in Polish and German ‘The Description of the Mineral Springs of Krynica’ – first scientific work on Krynica.
Stirba spent only summer in Krynica for winter he came back to Nowy Sącz. Due to his endeavors the condition of the road between these two places was improved. Doctor all the time had to fight against the administration authorities that recorded constant decrease in the capital gains from the export of the mineral waters. At the end of his professional work he wasn’t paid at all. In spite of this fact, he was still engaged in the development of the health resort.
After the failure of the November rising spa declined. In the years 1830-1833 the epidemic of cholera swept through Krynica. Stirba bravely fought against the terminal disease in the whole district of Nowy Sącz. Unfortunately, the bad circumstances in spa along with the whole country made him depressed and he died , being 49 years old. He was buried in Muszyna but place of his grave remains unknown till nowadays.