O'Brien received his medical degree from the University Medical College in NY (now NYU) in 1858. A native of NC, he was practicing medicine in Hopkinsville, KY at the beginning of the war. He was an assistant surgeon in Richmond from Feb. 2, 1863 through May 5, 1863, when he resigned. In a letter to the Surgeon General dated April 30, 1865, he indicates he was a volunteer doctor a the Battle of Fort Donelson, TN and then remained with the wounded at the hospitals in Clarksville, TN, then served as a doctor at the Battle of Murfreesboro and after the battle in the Kentucky Brigade hospital. He resigned hoping to go to Fredericksburg, VA, although no documentation places him there. In late 1864, he was in Florence, South Carolina serving as assistant surgeon at the prison camp there. He took the oath of allegiance at Raleigh, NC on May 30, 1865. He was sent to the prison camp at Point Lookout, MD, ending up in Washington, DC by June 17, 1865 when he was furnished with transportation back to Hopkinsville, KY by order of the Provost Marshal General.
After the war, he returned to Hopkinsville and resumed his medical practice. He was granted a patent for an "exercising-machine" in July 1886, assigning the patent rights to his wife, Martha. O'Brien died in 1901 and is buried in Hopkinsville's Riverside Cemetery.
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