Researching Samuel Cockburn

He is listed as one of the Scottish officers who, under the direction of General James Spens, the General of Scottish and English forces in Swedish service, was sent to King James VI and I in 1608/9 seeking levies for Sweden, although one source notes a travel pass for this purpose issued by the Swedes was dated 17 December 1609. A group of officers went with him including Hugh Cochran, Daniel Rogers, Robert Kinnaird, Patrick Ruthven, John Wauchop, George Douglas and William Horne. He served as colonel of a regiment in 1609-10 and took part in Karl IX's and Gustav II Adolf's war in Russia and in the Baltic states.

Cockburn played a leading role in the battle of Novgorod on 16 July 1611, in particular, his regiment blew open the town gates. In July 1612 he was sent by Jacob de la Gardie at Novogorod to Gustav II Adolf to seek payment for Cockburn's troops - some of his regiment had already been sent back to Finland for lack of finances. That year 1612 he obtained 301 homesteads in Ostrobothnia as compensation for a claim of 8,000 dalers. On 1 August 1613 Cockburn's troops landed at Narva. Cockburn was appointed Governor of Dunaw in Livonia, which was called "Fortress Cobron" after him. His regiment also formed part of the Swedish forces lent to Muscovy during the hostilities with Poland-Lithuania from 1614 to 1616. He was at the siege of Augdow and Pskov, and relieved Ladoga. Cockburn's regiment is listed in military payrolls every year from 1611 to 1615, and in 1614 and a register was made of all the sick soldiers under his command. In 1615 there is a note of decommissioning payment for Cockburn and his regiment, and by May 1616 the Swedes were keen to allow the soldiers to rest and recoup in case they were needed again. According to one source his troops mutinied at Narva in 1616 (?) and he then took command of the Karelia troops. Cockburn tried in vain to get reimbursement for his loans to the Crown in June 1616, although Axel Oxenstierna did intervene on Cockburn's behalf with the bailiff of Porvoo who was preventing the Scotsman from earning his keep from his land. Indeed, when the Swedish-Russian peace looked imminent, Cockburn requested a transfer into Russian service, and in December 1617 this was granted by the Swedes. Cockburn was to ensure that he was only used against Poland and that he was to convince the Tsar that the Poles were weak, being engaged in war with the Turks and facing domestic opposition. Although it is intriguing that a Scotsman was considered for such intricate use in Swedish foreign policy, it appears that Cockburn and his fellow officers never did enter Russian service however. Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna intervened on his behalf in October 1616 with the local baillies of Porvoo and Rassborg to leave Cockburn unmolested. There is a letter regarding Cockburn and his regiment dated 5 November 1621. At that point he was in active service on Gustav II Adolf's Livonian campaign in the renewed hostilities against Poland. Cockburn served as the commandant at Duna, near Riga in Livonia. One of the rare times Cockburn's troops were negatively described was when they were quartered in three separate villages. Axel Oxenstierna noted that Cockburn was one of the officers killed by illness by 12 February 1622. Jacob de la Gardie records that colonel Cockburn had died by March 1622, (another source erroneously notes that he died in 1631 in Turku) but he appears to have been buried in 1621 in the Turku Cathedral after a military campaign in Latvia. His brother Johan Cockburn erected a marble monument to his memory. He had been married to Barbara Kinnaird.

Samuel Cockburn was born into a family of shoemakers in Duns, Scottish Borders, a market town that was the county seat of Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders. As a young man he worked as an apothecary on the Square in Duns, Scottish Borders. In 1848 he completed an MD degree from the University of St Andrews and received a Licentiate from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd). At this time the medical community in Edinburgh had already for some years been animated by a heated debate between the medical establishment (including such notable figures as Professor James Syme, Professor Sir James Simpson and Professor Sir Robert Christison) and proponents of the alternative medical system of homeopathy advocated at the University by Professor William Henderson, Professor Charles Ransford (a Fellow and former Treasurer of the RCSEd) and others. Efforts to expel Henderson from the RCSEd had already been made repeatedly in the 1840s and 1850s, but without success.

Cockburn was evidently won over by the alternative medical system, and spent the first 14 years of his medical career as the physician at the Dundee Homeopathic Dispensary (opened on 16 June 1849). In January 1856 he completed a book, titled Medical Reform, which was aimed at a broad readership and was published in both Great Britain and the United States. The book appeared at a critical time when the appropriate directions of necessary medical reform were being widely debated. In 1857 Prof. Syme published his second open letter to the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, calling for medical reforms that would require strict conformity with the conventional practices advocated by the RCSEd. Cockburn's work is both a strongly worded critique of conventional medical practices of that time (e.g. bloodletting and the ill-informed use of potentially dangerous medicines) as well as a vigorous defense of homeopathy. It attempts to discredit the medical establishment by giving examples of contradictory treatments recommended by contemporary medical theory (which Cockburn called allopathy, a derogatory term used by homeopaths). The book also denounced the "heavy-handed" attempts by the RCSEd to pressure its members (including himself) to avoid the "quackery" of homeopathy.

In 1862 Cockburn moved to Glasgow, where he practiced homeopathy for the rest of his career. As well as practicing homeopathy at his clinic, Cockburn continued to lecture and publish articles on homeopathy. He was an active member of the British Homeopathic Society and a well-known member of the homeopathic community in Glasgow in the late 19th century.

In his retirement, Cockburn wrote two books that expounded on his convictions concerning the relationship between science and religion.