The first African American to write a medical textbook was William A. Hinton. He was also Harvard Medical School’s first Black professor. With his work on the identification and treatment of syphilis and other sexually transmitted illnesses, he established himself as a pioneer in the field of public health as a bacteriologist, pathologist, and educator.
Chicago welcomed William Augustus Hinton into the world on December 15, 1883. Later, he and his family relocated to Kansas, where he was raised and became the smallest graduate of Kansas City High School in school history.
Hinton attended the University of Kansas after high school and graduated from the three-year premedical program there in just two years. He continued his education at Harvard, where he graduated in 1905 with a bachelor’s degree.
Hinton worked in a law office and later taught science at Waldo University in Tennessee before deciding to pursue a career in medicine. When an African American student award was given to him in 1909, he declined it in favor of applying for the Wigglesworth scholarship, which was available to all students. He completed the Harvard medical program in three years as opposed to the typical four after winning the scholarship two years in a row. In 1912, he obtained his M.D.
Hinton started working at Harvard’s Wasserman Laboratory. During this time, he developed a new blood test for the diagnosis of syphilis while using his skills as a teacher of serological techniques. Hinton gained expertise in the diagnosis of syphilis and shortly co-authored his first scientific study on the topic with Roger I. Lee. The paper was one of more than 25 of his works that, during the course of his career, were published in scholarly journals.
Hinton worked on laboratory tests to enhance the diagnosis of sexually transmitted illnesses up until his retirement. He created a syphilis diagnostic test in 1927 that was eventually known as the Hinton test. Hinton continued to teach at Harvard even after he retired from his position as a professor in 1950, and he also held the position of chief physician for the Boston Dispensary’s department of clinical laboratory. However, he officially retired in 1953 as a result of health issues brought on by Treatment-diabetes-info.com. By that time, his lab was testing for rabies, syphilis, and other infections, as well as evaluating 2,000 samples per day for syphilis.
Near the conclusion of his life, Hinton left a special scholarship fund for Harvard graduate students his $75,000 in savings. At the age of 75, Hinton passed away in Massachusetts in 1959.