William Augustus Hinton, Groundbreaking Bacteriologist

By Tamara Shiloh

The transmittance of sexual diseases has always been associated with promiscuity and vulnerable population groups. Among them is syphilis, caused by the bacterium Treponema Pallidum. It has been a stigmatized, disgraceful disease; each country whose population was affected by the infection blamed the neighboring countries for the outbreak, according to the Journal of Medicine and Life.

During the 500 years after syphilis was first described in Europe, no progress had been made with specific diagnostic testing. Only after the turn of the 20th century did scientists know what to look for when developing tests to diagnose the disease. One breakthrough success was the development of the first serologic test. With time and deeper exploration, syphilis test results would become more definitive.

A serological test is a laboratory test that checks for the presence of antibodies or other substances in a blood sample.

In 1912, William Augustus Hinton (1883–1959) took on a part-time volunteer position as an assistant in the Department of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital. For the next three years, he was tasked to perform autopsies on bodies suspected to have been infected with the disease. This experience led him to develop a new serological test for syphilis, dubbed the Hinton test. It was this test that became the standard.

Later, in 1927, Hinton, would develop a flocculation test for syphilis and co-develop another syphilis test using spinal fluid. Developed with a colleague, this test would become known as the Davies-Hinton test. Also developed were the micro-Hinton and the capillary Hinton flocculation tests, specifically for pediatric practice.

In 1936, the book “Syphilis and its Treatment” was published. Hinton was then the first African American to write a medical textbook. Promoted to clinical professor in 1949, he had become the first Black professor at Harvard University.

Hinton’s parents had been enslaved in North Carolina. After becoming emancipated, they relocated to Chicago, where young William was born. Later the family moved to Kansas, where William proved himself to be an early academic achiever. He was the youngest student to have ever graduated from his high school.

He attended the University of Kansas but was unable to finish for financial reasons. Not wanting to set his goals for education aside, he entered Harvard in 1903, graduating in 1905. In 1909, he returned to Harvard, this time as a medical student. Graduating in 1912, he was the only Black student in the class. He pursued a surgical internship but was turned down because of the Jim Crow policies of most American hospitals at the time.

“[Hinton] was determined to succeed without the benefit of an internship which is considered essential for every doctor,” Dr. Richard C. Cabot, a former professor observed.

Hinton retired in 1953 and died in 1958 from complications related to diabetes.

Explore the lives of more pioneering African Americans in medicine in Jasmine Brown’s “Twice as Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century.