Robley Dunglison (4 January 1798 – 1 April 1869) was an English-American physician, medical educator and author who served as the first full-time professor of medicine in the United States at the newly founded University of Virginia from 1824 to 1833.

He assisted William Beaumont in some of his experiments on gastric digestion and published the first description of Huntington's disease in his textbook The Practice of Medicine in 1842.

[3] In 1819, he received diplomas from the Royal College of Surgeons and the Society of Apothecaries and began the practice of medicine.

[2] Dunglison initially focused on obstetrics and accepted an appointment as physician-accoucheur at the Eastern Dispensary in London.

[6] The agreement with the University of Virginia was that beyond medical consultation with Jefferson and select others, he would not practice medicine.

[3] While at the University of Virginia, Dunglison published his landmark textbook Human Physiology (1832), which established his reputation as the “Father of American Physiology.”[4] He took an active role in the scientific experiments on gastric digestion conducted by William Beaumont.

[7] In 1832, Dunglison was elected to the American Philosophical Society[10] and served in multiple leadership roles.

[3] In 1833, he accepted a position as chair of materia medica, therapeutics, hygiene and medical jurisprudence at the University of Maryland and moved to Baltimore.

[14] Dunglison successfully campaigned for the creation of an asylum for Philadelphia's mentally ill residents.

[4] One of Dunglison's recently graduated students at Jefferson Medical College, Charles Oscar Waters, provided his professor with a description of the "magrums" (a folk name for what is now called Huntington's disease), which Waters observed was prevalent in Westchester County, New York.

[15] Although he had never seen a case, Dunglison included a description of the disease in his 1842 textbook The Practice of Medicine.