George Hoyt Whipple

George Hoyt Whipple was born on August 28, 1878 in Ashland, New Hampshire. His father, Ashley Cooper Whipple, and paternal grandfather, Solomon Mason Whipple, were both country doctors. When Whipple was two years old his father died of pneumonia and he was raised by his mother and grandmother. As a boy he enjoyed spending time out doors, hunting and fishing which he did throughout his life. Through prep school and college he earned money for his education during breaks and summers providing help and service to tourists to Squam Lake and Lake Winnepesaukee in New Hampshire. He attended Andover Academy and Yale University, graduating with an A.B. in 1900.

Intending to become a physician like his father and grandfather he took a year off from school and earned money for medical school working at Dr. Holbrook's Military School in Ossining, New York, where he taught mathematics and science and served as an athletics coach. In 1901 he entered Johns Hopkins University Medical School. He did so well in his first year anatomy and physiology classes that he won the chance to serve as a student assistant in those classes in his second year. During medical school Whipple became fascinated with pathology, studying the effects of disease on tissues. He graduated medical school in 1905. Graduating fourth in a class of fifty four, he had his choice of internships and choose to stay at Johns Hopkins as a pathology assistant until 1907.

In 1907 Whipple went to Panama and worked as a pathologist at Ancon Hospital, later named Gorgas Hospital, during the building of the Panama Canal. In 1908 he returned to Johns Hopkins first as an assistant, and later an instructor, a associate and associate professor of pathology. In 1914 he was appointed professor of research medicine and director of the Hooper Foundation for Medical Research at the University of California. He was dean of the University of California Medical school from 1920 to 1921. In 1921 he became the dean of the then newly founded and yet to be built medical school at Rochester University. He he served as dean until 1954 and remained at Rochester University, as a professor of pathology, the rest of his life.

Whipple's research was concerned with anemia and the physiology and pathology of the liver. His experiments with anemic dogs revealed that a diet of liver reversed the effects of the anemia. Whipple found that diets of meat were more effective in curing anemia than vegetable diets, but cooked apricots were surprisingly effective. His research led William Murphy and George Minot to experiment with liver diets for people suffering from pernicious anemia, which cured it. Whipple, Murphy, and Minot were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934 for "their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anemia". Whipple was also the first to describe Whipple's disease, a rare infectious disease caused by the bacterium Tropheryma whipplei.

Whipple died on February 1, 1976.

References:

Miller, Leon L.; "George Hoyt Whipple: 1878-1976"; Biographical Memiors; National Academy Press; 1995

George Hoyt Whipple, Nobel biography

George Hoyt Whipple, Wikipedia entry

William P. Murphy

William Parry Murphy was born on February 6, 1892 in Stoughton, Wisconsin. His father, Thomas Francis Murphy, was a congregational minister with pastorates in Wisconsin and Oregon. Murphy was educated in public schools in Oregon and Wisconsin and the University of Oregon where he took an A.B. degree in 1914. He spent the next two years as a teacher in the public schools in Oregon teaching physics and mathematics. After the short stint teaching he decided to attend medical school. He started in medical school at the University of Oregon medical school in Portland, where he also acted as a laboratory assistant in the department of anatomy, for one year. He then attended a summer seminar at the Rush Medical School in Chicago. He was then awarded the William Stanislaus Murphy Fellowship to Harvard University Medical School, which he retained for three years, graduating with his M.D. in 1922.

He spent two years as a house officer at the Rhode Island hospital and then he was assistant resident physician at the Peter Brent Brigham Hospital. He held this position for 18 months and then was appointed Junior Associate in Medicine. In 1924 he was appointed Assistant in Medicine at Harvard University and from 1928 to 1935 he was was Instructor in Medicine there. From 1935 to 1958 he was Lecturer in Medicine and in 1958 was made Senior Associate. He was Emeritus Lecturer thereafter.

From 1923 his research dealt with diabetes mellitus and blood diseases. It is his work on pernicious anemia (a form of the disease characterized by a lower than normal amount of red blood cells) that he is remembered for. In 1924, working with George Minot, he bled dogs to make them anemic. He then fed them various substances to see if any would help with the dogs anemia. He found that a diet of liver relieved the anemia. Later he was able to isolate vitamin B12 as the agent that relieved the anemia.

Pernicious anemia is a form of anemia characterized by the inhibition of DNA synthesis in red blood cell progenitors, that results in the formation of large, fragile, megoblastic erythrocytes. The cause of the disease can be a dietary insufficiency of vitamin B12 or an autoimmune reaction against intrinsic factor, a protein secreted by parietal cells of the stomach mucosa. Intrinsic factor is responsible for the absorption of vitamin B12. Vitamin B12 cannot be synthesized by the body and thus must be absorbed from the diet and normally the body stores 3 to 5 years worth of the vitamin in the liver. When the absorption process is blocked by an autoimmune reaction against intrinsic factor or the parietal cells pernicious anemia results. If the body cannot absorb B12 trough normal means the disease can be cured by intravenous injection of the vitamin otherwise oral B12 can be used.

For their work discovering the cure for pernicious anemia Murphy and Minot were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1934, sharing it with George H. Whipple who first suggested raw liver as a treatment for pernicious anemia. Murphy was also awarded the Order of White by the country of Finland, the Cameron Prize from the faculty of the University of Edinburgh and the Gold Medal from the Massachusetts Humane Society.

He died on October 9, 1987.

References:

Spicoll; "William P. Murphy: Condon's Other Nobel Prize Winner"; on the Pauling Blog, paulingblog.wordpress.com

William P. Murphy Nobel Biography

William P. Murphy Wikipedia Entry