Robley Dunglison

Robley Dunglison, 1848

Robley Dunglison was one of the first professors of the University of Virginia. He was the first professional full-time professor of medicine in the United States.

Early Life

Robley Dunglison was born on January 4, 1798 in Keswick England. At 17 years old, he began his medical education, apprenticing under John Edmondson. In 1818, he received diplomas from the Royal College of Surgeons and the Society of Apothecaries in London.

University of Virgina

In 1824, Francis Walker Gilmer was sent to England to recruit faculty for the University of Virginia. Dunglison accepted a position as a professor of medicine and anatomy at the university. Dunglison and his wife resided in Pavilion X during his tenure at UVA. he was not only a professor at the university but was a physician to Thomas Jefferson, making frequent visits to Monticello. While living on UVA's grounds, Dunglison owned enslaved people who had been purchased from Jefferson.

While teaching at UVA, Dunglison was known for the practice of comparative anatomy which he used to characterize the differences between black and white people. He dissected black bodies in the anatomical theater at the University of Virginia to demonstrate these supposed genetic differences. While the term eugenics had yet to be coined, Dunglison was one of the early professors at UVA who would lay the foundation for eugenical thinking by using science to divide races. James Lawrence Cabell, another early eugenicist at UVA was one of Dunglison's students.