Robley Dunglison was an English-born American physician and educator. He was the first full-time professor of medicine in the United States and the first American author of a book on physiology, a medical dictionary, and a history of medicine, as well as a pioneer in the publication of works on public health. Dunglison also made important contributions to William Beaumont’s classic work on the physiology of digestion.
Background
Robley Dunglison was born on January 4, 1798, in Keswick, England. His father, William, and his maternal grandfathers were wool manufacturers; his mother was Elizabeth Jackson, and his maternal grandmother was a Robley, hence his first name.
Education
Orphaned as a child, Dunglison received a classical education at Green Row Academy, Abbey Holme, through a legacy from a rich uncle. There he obtained an excellent knowledge of Greek and Latin as well as a fluent pen in English; later he was also to become well-versed in French and German. Having decided upon a medical career, he took a preceptorship with a surgeon at Keswick and went to Edinburgh, Paris, and London for his formal medical education; he obtained his degree by examination from Erlangen.
In London he assisted the ailing Doctor Charles Thomas Haden, a prominent practitioner, who greatly influenced the development of Dunglison’s professional and social character. Dunglison passed the examinations of the Royal College of Surgeons and of the Society of Apothecaries and commenced practice in 1819 at London.
Career
In 1819 Dunglison was appointed physician-accoucheur to the Eastern Dispensary. His pen, however, was busier than his lancet, and by 1824 he had published articles on the English Lake Region, belladonna, malaria, and meningitis; a book on the bowel complaints of children; numerous book reviews; translations of Félix-Hippolyte Larrey’s Moxa and of François Magendie’s Formulary; and an edition of Robert Hooper’s Vade-Mecum; and had served on the editorial boards of two medical journals.
He then went to the University of Virginia where, at the behest of Thomas Jefferson, he was appointed to the chair of medicine. Responsible only for teaching, Dunglison was able to prepare textbooks on those subjects he taught.
After eight years at the University of Virginia, Dunglison moved to the University of Maryland and then, after three years, to the Jefferson Medical College at Philadelphia, where he taught for the next thirty-two years. When he arrived, faculty dissension and rivalry with another Philadelphia medical school were threatening to destroy the college, but Dunglison’s skillful reorganization of the faculty welded it into a coherent, cooperative teaching group, and he succeeded in establishing the school as one of the country’s best medical centers.
As a member of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind he was an early advocate of raised type for the blind. He was also interested in the Elwyn School for the mentally retarded and worked for improved care of the insane poor, preparing several reports that led to reforms in asylums.
An Episcopalian, Dunglison was a member of the vestry of St. Stephen’s Church, Philadelphia.
Membership
Elected to many organizations, Dunglison was especially active in the American Philosophical Society and in the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia.
American Philosophical Society
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United States
Musical Fund Society
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United States
Personality
Dunglison abhorred the knife and completely avoided surgery.
Fluent, lucid, elegant, entertaining, instructive, and stimulating as a lecturer, he attracted many students to the Jefferson Medical College: more than 5,000 nineteenth-century physicians proudly displayed his signature on their diplomas.
Although medical practice was not to his taste, he attended Thomas Jefferson in his last illness and was consulted by presidents Monroe, Madison, and Jackson and by families connected with the University of Virginia.
Connections
In 1824 Dunglison married Harriet Leadam, the daughter of a London apothecary; they had seven children. Their third son, born in 1828, died of bronchitis at 11 months. The fifth and the sixth sons, Richard James and Thomas Randolph, became physicians.