William Quinland was a pathologist and educator who contributed pioneering research on pathology in African-Americans. A graduate of the Meharry Medical College in Nashville, he turned down a professorship at Harvard Medical College to take a faculty position at Meharry, a medical institution for African-American practitioners, believing they needed him more. Quinland published studies on numerous topics, among them a study on carcinomas in which types of cancers were found in samples from African-American men and women of various ages. He was elected the first black member of the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists. Quinland was born on this date in 1885 and died in 1953.

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