Robert Amory

Robert Amory ( – ) was an American physician. Robert Amory was born on in Boston. 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 John Singleton 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 Epes Dixwell's school in Boston. Amory graduated from Harvard College in 1863 and from the Harvard Medical School in 1866. On May 12, 1864 he married Marianne Appleton Lawrence (1843-1882), daughter of Amos Adams Lawrence and his wife, Sarah Appleton. Together, they had one child named Alice. After Marianne's death on May 15, 1882, Robert was remarried on Sep. 4, 1884 to Katharine Leighton Crehore (1862-1920) and had four more children. 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 physiological 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.