Background

Arnold Hamilton Maloney was born on July 4, 1888, in Cocoye Village, Trinidad, British West Indies (now Cocoyea, San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago). He was the oldest male of ten children in his family. His father, Lewis Albert Maloney, was a building contractor and grocery chain operator, while his mother, Estelle Evetta (Bonas) Maloney, taught needlework to young women and later operated a general store.

Education

Maloney was educated at Naparima College in Trinidad, which is affiliated with Cambridge University, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1909. That same year, he immigrated to the United States where he attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1910, he earned his master’s degree from Columbia University. Two years later Maloney received a Bachelor of Science degree in Theology from the General Theological Seminary. Maloney entered Indiana University School of Medicine in 1925, graduating with a medical degree in 1929. He then attended the University of Wisconsin, where he engaged in research in pharmacology, earning a doctorate in this field in 1931.

Career

Maloney began his career at age twenty-three with the distinction of being the youngest minister in the Protestant Episcopal Church. After practicing for several years, Maloney felt that the Episcopal Church was neglecting young black men. A suggestion he made prompted the church to establish St. Augustine in Raleigh, North Carolina, as a college for black youth. Although there were aspects of the ministry that Maloney enjoyed, he became disillusioned and left the church in 1922. He published a book outlining his views - The Essentials of Race Leadership, in 1924. Maloney then turned to teaching, accepting a professorship of psychology at Wilberforce University in Ohio.

From 1931 until 1953 Maloney worked in the department of pharmacology at Howard University School of Medicine in Washington (now Howard University College of Medicine). He began as an associate professor of pharmacology, becoming a full professor, and then head of the department. During these years, he also worked as a consultant in pharmacology for Freedmen’s Hospital (now Howard University Hospital). Maloney’s research involved several areas of pharmacology and his discovery of an antidote for barbiturate overdose. High levels of barbiturates (drugs used as sedatives) cause potentially deadly symptoms such as shallow respiration, central nervous system depression, and deep anesthesia. Maloney determined that administering picrotoxin (a potentially lethal poison) quickly reversed these symptoms. His first paper on this subject was published in 1931. He also wrote more than fifty articles to journals and periodicals during his career before retiring in 1953, including Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Achievements

• Maloney has the distinction of being the second man of African descent to earn both the Doctor of Medicine and the Doctor of Philosophy degrees. He also became the first black professor of pharmacology in the United States.
  
  His most important work was the discovery of an antidote for barbiturate overdose.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Adequate Norm an Essay on Christian Ethics

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

    1923
  • Pathways to democracy 1945
  • Amber gold;: An adventure in autobiography, 1946
  • Some Essentials of Race Leadership 1924

Religion

Maloney was a minister in the Protestant Episcopal Church, but later he decided that the Church neglected black man, so he left it.

Membership

Maloney was a member of many learned societies and several medical associations, including the American Negro Academy, American Academy of Political Sciences and the National Medical Association.

Personality

Maloney was hugely affected by the written word. He devoted two chapters of his autobiography, Amber Gold: An Adventure in Autobiography, to books he had been influenced by or enjoyed.

Connections

In 1916, Maloney married Beatrice Pocahontas Johnston. They had two children - Arnold Maloney, Jr. and Louise Beatrice.

Father:

Lewis Albert Maloney

He was a building contractor and grocery chain operator.

Mother:

Estelle Evetta (Bonas) Maloney

She was a needlework instructor and grocery store operator.

child:

Arnold Maloney, Jr.

child:

Louise Beatrice Maloney

Wife:

Beatrice Pocahontas Johnston