# American Medical Biographies/Amory, Robert

​Amory, Robert (1842–1910)
Robert Amory was born in Boston May 3, 1842, and died at Nahant, Mass., August 27, 1910. He was the third of six sons of James Sullivan Amory, a manufacturer of cotton goods, and his wife, Mary Copley Greene, a great-niece of Copley, the portrait-painter. Their Brookline home had a peculiar charm; ​friend and stranger alike were impressed by the warm, cordial hospitality, courteous manners and the atmosphere of refinement and culture; much attention was given to the religious and moral development of the boys. The older ones attended Mr. Epes Dixwell's school in Boston. Robert graduated from Harvard College in 1863 and from the Harvard Medical School in 1866.
In 1864 he married Marianne Appleton Lawrence, daughter of Amos Adams Lawrence and his wife, Sarah Appleton. She died in 1881. In 1885 he married Katharine Leighton Crehore.
After the medical school days, the year 1867 was spent abroad chiefly in Paris, France, where Robert Amory devoted his time to the experimental study of the action of drugs on animals. He returned home, settled in Brookline, and soon had a small laboratory in his stable, where his experimental researches were continued. In 1869 he became lecturer on the action of drugs in the Harvard Medical School, and in 1871 was made professor of physiology at Bowdoin College Medical School in Brunswick, Me. He taught there four years, and gave it up most reluctantly in order to resume his Brookline practice.
In time the little stable laboratory was replaced by a commodious house on LaGrange Street, Boston, where lectures and laboratory courses were given to all interested in experimental biology. The Boston Society of Medical Sciences held meetings there. Dr. Amory was one of its founders; he was a fellow of the Massachusetts Medical Society, the Boston Society for Medical Observation, and. the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. When the state of Massachusetts created the office of medical examiner, Dr. Amory was the first to be appointed from his district. He held several positions in the medical corps of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. In 1880 he was president of the National Decennial Convention for the Revision of the United State Pharmacopoeia.
During the summer months Dr. Amory had a medical practice in Bar Harbor, Maine, where he built himself a cottage. He was always interested in physics and it was natural that the invention of the telephone should fascinate him; so when Professor Alexander Bell came to Boston to test and perfect his new inventions, Dr. Amory sought him out to extend to him and to his colleagues an invitation to use his laboratory, where several devices were invented and tested.
Later on Dr. Amory withdrew from medical work to devote his time to business. He became the treasurer and later president of the Brookline Gas and Electric Light Company, where he remained until 1908.
Among many contributions to the medical journals may be mentioned, "Chloral Hydrate; Experiments Disproving the Evolution of Chloroform in the Organism;" Nitrous Oxide Gas;" the "Pathological Action of Prussic Acid;" "Photography of the Spectrum."
He published two books, one in 1875, a translation of Professor Kuss' Lectures on Physiology; another in 1883, a textbook on electrolysis. He also edited the second, third, and fourth editions of Wharton and Stifle's "Medical Jurisprudence," which after so many years is still used as a textbook in toxicology.