Dr. John Osborn was the only one of the forty-seven incorporators of the Connecticut Medical Society residing in this county, and it devolved on him by the charter to organize the county society. He was the first chairman of the county meeting, and the first treasurer of the State society. He was re-elected Fellow each year as long as he remained a member, also as one of the committee of examination for the county.
The Osborn family furnishes a rare instance of superior talent being transmitted from generation to generation for nearly two centuries.
Dr. John Osborn, the first of the name in Middletown, was born in Sandwich, Massachusetts. He graduated at Harvard in 1735, when he was offered a tutorship, which he declined, with a view, probably, of becoming, like his father, a Presbyterian minister. When in college he was distinguished for mathematical investigations, and Latin verses, which were much admired by the faculty. It was while in college he wrote the elegy on the death of a sister, which has been copied by Dr. Field in his Middletown centennial address. After leaving college he wrote the “Whaling Song,” a copy of which may be found in Barber’s “Connecticut Historical Collections.”
The son, whose views were in accordance with his father’s, was induced to give up the ministry, and turn his attention to medicine. The misfortune of the Osborns seems to have been that they were a century in advance of the times in their religious belief and their sentiments of toleration.
It is to these differences with the sons of the pilgrims that the medical profession is indebted for five generations of able members, and the Episcopal Church for large accessions of true churchmen.
Dr. Osborn, about 1739, removed to Middletown, where he soon felt the cold shoulder of the pastor of the only church in Middletown, Rev. William Russell, who did not show favor to the new physician. He died of consumption in 1753, aged 40 years.
Dr. Osborn shared the practice of Middletown with Dr. John Arnold, who, with his brother Joshua, of Middle Haddam, was a student of Dr. Fiske (the former died in 1754, having had two wives and fifteen children), and, with Dr. Abijah Moores, who died of smallpox in 1759, having been the father of twelve children, was succeeded by Dr. John Dickinson, who left the profession for public life. Dr. Eliot Rawson, a descendant of the noted secretary of Massachusetts, removed from East Haddam to Middletown about the time Dr. Osborn’s health began to fail.
John Osborn, the second of that name, was about thirteen years old at the time of his father’s death. We do not learn that he possessed any extra advantages for a classical education. He early entered the office of the celebrated Norman Morrison, in Hartford, to study medicine. John Osborn and Alexander Wolcott, son of the governor, were considered the most distinguished of all his students. In 1758, before the former had attained his majority, he went with the army that attacked Ticonderoga, in the second French war, and in a subordinate capacity was in the medical department of the provincial troops.
The Osborns were hereditarily haters of France and lovers of England. If Dr. Osborn ever worshiped the likeness of anything in the earth beneath, it was the British crown. It was for this reason that his valuable services were not made available during the Revolutionary War. About 1763 he commenced practice in Middletown, where he followed the profession more than sixty years. He was a man of extensive reading, and for some time possessed the best medical library in the State. His knowledge of materia medica was extensive and accurate; he excelled in chemistry; he exerted himself to remove the prejudices against inoculation for the smallpox, and to improve the treatment of that distressing disease. About twelve hundred persons were inoculated in Middletown during the winters of 1777 and ’78. He was a very thorough teacher of medicine, and the character of such physicians as Moses F. Coggswell, his sons, Prof. John C. and Dr. Samuel, as also Dr. Thomas Minor, taught solely by him, attest the thoroughness of his training. “As a practitioner he was eminent. He appreciated the worth of well-bred and faithful physicians, but held quackery in the utmost abhorrence. He had great sensibility, quick apprehension, and strong passions; he spoke his mind fearlessly, when and where he pleased, and it was not safe for any to attack him in words, for none better understood the retort keen.” He inherited none of the courtesy or poetry of his father. These ornamental qualities seemed to have passed around him, to reappear in full force in his four sons. His success, which depended on his great ability and strict integrity, was a compliment to the people of his day. His presence was a terror to the young, and the aged now speak of their feelings at his approach with a shrug of the shoulders. He was emphatically a man of few words, and meddlesome talk and inquiries brought out from him sharp answers.
He built and last occupied the frame house on Main street, opposite the Episcopal church. He died in 1825, aged nearly 85 years, and a plain brown stone in the Mortimer Cemetery marks the last resting place of one who was so long a prominent citizen, and a physician who spent his whole life in Middletown.
Dr. John Osborn had two sons who entered the profession.
Source
Whittemore, Henry, History of Middlesex county, Connecticut, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, New York : J. B. Beers & Co., 1884.
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