George H. Whipple

Facts

George Hoyt Whipple

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

George Hoyt Whipple
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1934

Born: 28 August 1878, Ashland, NH, USA

Died: 1 February 1976, Rochester, NY, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

Prize motivation: “for their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anaemia”

Prize share: 1/3

Work

Anemia, or blood deficiency, means that the amount of red blood cells in the blood is too low. George Whipple and his colleagues drew blood from dogs and then gave them different types of food, while simultaneously studying the formation of new blood cells. This endeavor at the beginning of the 1920s showed that formation of blood cells was stimulated by a diet rich in foods like liver, kidney, meat and apricots. This suggested avenues for treating people with a serious form of anemia, pernicious anemia, by having them daily eat abundant amounts of liver.

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