American Medical Biographies/Griffin, Ezra Leonard
Griffin, Ezra Leonard (1821–1892)
Ezra Leonard Griffin, son of Eben and Susannah Lewis Griffin, was born in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, September 21, 1821, his mother a Bostonian, his father a native of Gloucester.
He received his academic education at Kimball Union Academy and entered Dartmouth College in 1844. While there his health failed and forced him to abandon his preparation for the ministry, which had been his choice. He left Dartmouth at the close of his sophomore year and entered the Berkshire Medical Institution, where he graduated in 1849.
In the same year Dr. Griffin married Abby M., daughter of the Rev. Samuel Mason, of Newburyport, Massachusetts, and began professional life in Nashua, New Hampshire, and after moving to Derry, in the same state, removed, in the autumn of 1855, to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
Griffin was prominently identified with the medical history of Wisconsin for thirty years, being warmly interested in all that related to the practice of medicine, an active supporter of state and local medical societies, deeply interested in the subject of vaccination and was one of the first to establish in the northwest a depot for the propagation of animal vaccine.
He was a clear and forcible writer and a prime mover in the organization of the State Board of Health, of which he was for many years an honored president. He wrote memoirs of Dr. M. C. Darling, Dr. H. M. Lilly and Dr. Moses Barrett and was the author of a report on "Vaccination" and a paper on "Small-pox."
He died in January, 1892.