WHIPPLE, GEORGE HOYT 1878-1976

Conqueror of pernicious anemia

Early Career

The work of George Hoyt Whipple was often ridiculed, but it saved thousands of lives and led to the understanding of organisms as intricately interconnected systems. Whipple attended the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, and earned his medical degree in 1905. His primary interest was in the research of blood and liver disorders, which he studied with a colleague, John H. King. Whipple and King concentrated on the study of obstructive jaundice (icterus), a disease in which liver damage results in the release of yellowish bile pigments that appear in the skin of the patient. Whipple continued his study of the disease with Charles Hooper at the University of California in San Francisco. In 1914 their research led them to consider the possibility that the liver might be involved in pernicious anemia.

Pernicious Anemia

Pernicious anemia is a type of anemia in which the number of red blood cells in a patient's bloodstream is severely reduced. This leads to a reduction in the level of blood hemoglobin, which transports oxygen to the cells of the body. These cells then cannot produce enough energy to create the chemical reactions needed to survive. The result is the death of the cell and often the death of the patient.

A Treatment for Anemia Is Found

Whipple and Hooper began their research in pernicious anemia using dogs from a local pound. They were tying to determine how the animals reacted to artificially induced anemia. Next, they tried to increase rapidly the production of hemoglobin through a variation in the dogs' diet. They were able to produce dramatic results by feeding the dogs a diet of liver, lean scrap meat, and beef heart. On this diet complete hemoglobin regeneration occurred within two to four weeks. Although ridiculed by the medical community for thinking that a specific diet could cure a disease, Whipple and Hooper created liver and meat extracts that produced favorable results. Hooper was the first doctor to use these extracts as a treatment for a human patient suffering from pernicious anemia, but due to the ridicule, Hooper discontinued the research. Whipple continued the experiments with the help of Frieda S. Robscheit-Robbins at the New School of Medicine and Dentistry at Rochester University in New York. This research led to a definition of the necessary dietary requirements for treatment of pernicious anemia and, with the help of George Minot at Harvard University and the Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company, to the development of extracts that would save thousands of lives.

The Importance of Iron

In 1925 Whipple and his associate discovered that the mineral iron was the most essential element for the production of hemoglobin. This important finding was announced in the American Journal of Physiology in an article titled "Blood Regeneration in Severe Anemia: III. Iron Reaction Favorable—Arsenic and Germanium Dioxide Almost Inert." Whipple and Robscheit-Robbins continued their research into the 1940s.

Nobel

In addition to the discovery of a treatment for pernicious anemia, Whipple also described several basic recycling enzymatic pathways within the body and improved the understanding of human liver and blood physiology. In 1934 Whipple's lifesaving research was recognized when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with George Minot and William Murphy.

Sources:

Tyler Wasson, ed., Nobel Prize Winners (New York: Wilson, 1987), pp. 1112-1114;

George Whipple, "Blood Regeneration in Severe Anemia, II, Favorable Influence of Liver, Heart and Skeletal Muscle in Diet/' American Journal of Physiology, 72 (1925): 408-418.

George Hoyt Whipple

The American pathologist George Hoyt Whipple (1878-1976) found that certain foods, especially liver, stimulate the regeneration of hemoglobin in animals suffering anemia.

George Hoyt Whipple was born in Ashland, New Hampshire, on August 28, 1878. He attended local schools until, at age 13, he transferred to a school in Tilton 15 miles away. Then in 1892 his widowed mother moved to Andover, Massachusetts, so that George could attend Phillips Academy. After graduation he entered Yale, received a degree in 1900, and in 1901 entered Johns Hopkins Medical School. He received his medical degree in 1905 and joined the department of pathology at John Hopkins almost immediately.

Whipple's early work led to the discovery in 1907 of a rare disease now commonly called "Whipple's disease, " which is related to a breakdown in fat storage in the body. In 1907 he accepted a one-year position in pathology at Ancon Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone but returned to Hopkins in 1908 as assistant resident pathologist. He advanced to resident pathologist and assistant professor of pathology in 1909, and in 1911 he was made associate professor.

On June 24, 1914, Whipple married Katharine Ball Waring. That same year he accepted a position as professor of research medicine and director of the Hooper Foundation for Medical Research in San Francisco. The foundation was a new, independent unit of the University of California, and Whipple was responsible for its organization. There he continued experiments started at Hopkins on the metabolism of bile pigments, which are made from hemoglobin that has been released from broken-down red blood corpuscles.

In 1920 Whipple was appointed dean of the University of California Medical School. In 1921 he became professor of pathology and dean of the new School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Rochester. The researches of Whipple and his colleagues on bile pigments and hemoglobin regeneration continued and were reported in a long series of scientific articles. The specific use of liver as an agent that stimulates the regeneration of hemoglobin was reported in the American Journal of Physiology in 1925. This discovery paved the way for the use of a raw liver diet in the treatment of pernicious anemia by George Richards Minot and William Parry Murphy. Minot and Murphy shared the 1934 Nobel Prize with Whipple.

Whipple's studies continued unabated, and among many other things he, with his collaborators, determined a long list of specific dietary factors, such as iron and copper, that influence hemoglobin regeneration.

Whipple was an active member of many scientific societies and was associated with the Rockefeller Foundation from 1927 until 1960. He retired as dean in 1953 and as professor of pathology in 1955. Whipple died on February 1, 1976.

Further Reading

George W. Corner, George Hoyt Whipple and His Friends: The Life-story of a Nobel Prize Pathologist (1963), is an informative and detailed biography that includes a complete bibliography of Whipple's publications. Brief accounts of Whipple's life and work are in Lloyd G. Stevenson, Nobel Prize Winners in Medicine and Physiology (1954), and Nobel Foundation, Nobel Lectures: Physiology or Medicine, 1922-1941, vol. 2 (1965). □

George Hoyt Whipple 1878–1976, American pathologist, b. Ashland, N.H., M.D. Johns Hopkins, 1905. He taught at Johns Hopkins (1909–14) and at the Univ. of California (1914–21) and was professor of pathology and dean of the school of medicine and dentistry at the Univ. of Rochester (1921–54). His work included studies of metabolism, blood regeneration, and anemia. For his independent researches on the treatment of pernicious anemia by the use of liver he shared the 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with G. R. Minot and W. P. Murphy.

Whipple, George Hoyt (1878–1976) American physician; jointly with Murphy and Minot, discovered the treatment of pernicious anaemia by feeding liver (1926); Nobel Prize 1934.