Minot was educated at Harvard College, where he received the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1908 and the Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School in 1912.
Gallery of George Minot
25 Shattuck St, Boston, MA 02115, United States
Minot received the Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School
Career
Gallery of George Minot
1934
United States
Portrait photo of George Richards Minot.
Gallery of George Minot
1943
United States
Oil portrait of George Richards Minot by Charles Sydney Hopkinson, 1943.
Achievements
Membership
National Academy of Sciences
Minot was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
American Philosophical Society
Minot was a member of the American Philosophical Society.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Minot was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Minot was educated at Harvard College, where he received the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1908 and the Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School in 1912.
George Richards Minot was an American physician and pathologist. He specialized in diseases of the blood, and for his research on the value of liver in treating pernicious anemia, he shared with W. P. Murphy and G. H. Whipple the 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Background
George Richards Minot was born on December 2, 1885, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and was the eldest son of James Jackson Minot and Elizabeth Frances Whitney, and a direct descendant of George Richards Minot. The forebears of each parent had been successful in business or professional careers in Boston, often in medicine. George's father was a physician and for many years a clinical teacher of medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. A great-uncle, Francis Minot, and a cousin, Charles Sedgwick Minot, had taught at Harvard Medical School, as had Minot's great-grandfather James Jackson, co-founder of the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Young Minot was considered a delicate child. Health-seeking winter vacations in Florida and in southern California with his parents provided opportunities for outdoor activity and led to a lifelong interest in natural history.
Education
Minot was educated at private schools in Boston and at Harvard College, where he received the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1908 and the Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School in 1912. After graduating from medical school, he spent sixteen months as a "house pupil" (intern) at the Massachusetts General Hospital under David L. Edsall at a time when an era of hospital-based clinical research was dawning in Boston. Minot had already become interested in the relation of diet to disease, and he now began his lifelong practice of taking meticulous dietary histories of patients, particularly those with anemia. Minot went next, at Edsall's suggestion, to Johns Hopkins.
Minot's initial appointment was as an assistant resident physician at the hospital, but in the fall of 1914, he transferred to the physiology laboratory of William H. Howell to work on problems of blood coagulation. Minot returned to Boston early in 1915. Upon his return, Minot resumed his research in blood disorders as an assistant in medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital (1915-1918). His office was adjacent to that of the hospital pathologist, J. Homer Wright, who had discovered in the bone marrow the site of origin of the dust-sized particles of the blood, the platelets. Minot began work with Roger I. Lee, chief of the West Medical Service at the hospital. In 1917 Minot began working at the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital in Boston, operated by the Cancer Commission of Harvard University, and over the next few years he transferred his research there completely; in 1923, he was appointed chief of its medical service. At Huntington, Minot became increasingly involved in the study of patients with leukemia or cancer. He published authoritative studies of chronic leukemias, their clinical course and response to X-ray therapy, and the biological effects of X rays upon blood-cell production. During these years, he was also engaged in the private practice of medicine, and in 1921, in association with Edwin A. Locke and others, he established a group practice, one of the earliest such ventures.
At about 1922, Minot began the study that led to his most important achievement, a cure for pernicious anemia. He had long been interested in the problem and now began urging his private patients with anemia to include more milk and meat and some liver in their diets. The immediate stimulus for this suggestion came from the work of George Hoyt Whipple, pathologist and dean at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, who with his principal research associate, Dr. Frieda Robscheit-Robbins, had conducted experiments on dogs rendered anemic by repeated bleeding. They studied the effect of dietary supplements such as liver, pork muscle, or spinach on the regeneration of blood hemoglobin and by 1923 concluded that the liver was by far the most potent. This evidence of the value of dietary supplementation, although based on a quite different type of experimental anemia, harmonized with Minot's long-standing clinical suspicion, gained from the taking of dietary histories, that patients with pernicious anemia often had lived for many years on diets deficient in animal protein. Encouraged by signs of some improvement in a few patients who had followed his suggestions, and especially by the considerable gain in one who greatly enjoyed eating liver, Minot invited one of his assistants in the group practice, William Parry Murphy, to join him in an all-out effort to test the possible benefits of a special diet containing as much as half a pound of liver a day. In 1926, they were able to report to the annual meeting of the Association of American Physicians that all of forty-five patients, many of them treated in Boston hospitals, "became much better rather rapidly soon after commencing the diet. " The following year, a collaboration with Edwin J. Cohn, professor of physical chemistry at Harvard, led to the development of an effective liver extract for oral use, which by 1928 was being produced on a commercial scale by the pharmaceutical firm of Eli Lilly and Company. In their early demonstration of the efficacy of liver feeding, as well as in the subsequently required testing of liver extracts on patients with pernicious anemia, Minot and his associates found that a systematic increase of reticulocytes in the blood within ten days was a reliable index of activity. Later research has found that it was chiefly the iron in the liver that benefited Whipple's dogs, and its vitamin B12 content that abolished the anemia in the patients of Minot and Murphy. Nevertheless, these pioneer empirical observations and the subsequent development by others of effective injectable liver extracts replaced eventually by vitamin B12 injections, saved the lives of countless prospective victims of pernicious anemia.
In 1928, Minot resigned from the Huntington Hospital to become director of the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory and chief of the Fourth (Harvard) Medical Service at the Boston City Hospital, succeeding his friend and colleague Francis W. Peabody. In that laboratory and its special ward, Minot had an enhanced opportunity for carrying on teaching and research. The Thorndike (opened in 1923) was the first clinical research facility of its kind to be established in a municipal hospital in this country. Young physicians, attracted by Minot's reputation and the unusual new opportunities for clinical research, eagerly sought appointments. Under Minot's stimulating influence, discoveries in other areas of medicine were made by his junior colleagues, among them Maxwell Finland, Chester S. Keefer, and Soma Weiss. Work on the cause of pernicious anemia was already in progress under William B. Castle, with whom Minot later published his only book, Pathological Physiology and Clinical Description of the Anemias (1936). In collaboration with Clark W. Heath, Minot demonstrated (1931-1932) the effectiveness of iron administration in patients with chronic hypochromic anemia; with Stacy R. Mettier he showed that the frequent lack of hydrochloric acid in the stomach of these patients was a significant factor in their decreased ability to assimilate iron, and with Maurice B. Strauss and Stanley Cobb he proved (1933) the importance of dietary inadequacy in causing "alcoholic" polyneuritis. In 1936, with Minot's encouragement, Arthur J. Patek, Jr., and Richard P. Stetson began observations on hemophilia showing that transfusions of normal platelet-free blood plasma temporarily corrected the abnormal blood coagulation. This led to the discovery, in collaboration with Francis H. L. Taylor, the biochemist of the Thorndike, of a plasma globulin of great value in the later management of hemophilia. Along with his research, Minot assumed teaching duties at Harvard Medical School, where he held appointments as assistant professor (1918-1927), clinical professor (1927-1928), and professor (1928-1948). Although his academic positions, administrative duties, and reputation as a consultant always made heavy demands upon him, he published some 150 papers, most dealing with blood disorders and the effects of nutritional deficiencies. He also found time for stimulation and encouragement of his pupils, often emphasized by notes concerning their research interests, handwritten on scraps of paper. By 1956, almost fifty of more than 400 graduates of the Thorndike or its affiliated medical services had become professors in American medical schools, and sixteen occupied distinguished posts abroad. In 1947 Minot resigned as director of the Thorndike Laboratory.
Minot's medical career coincided with the flowering of clinical research in the United States after World War I, and his studies of nutritional deficiency in anemia were in harmony with this growing concept of the causation of ill health. His work on pernicious anemia not only provided control of a formerly fatal disease but altered the study of diseases of the blood. Previously confined largely to descriptive morphological classification, this study came to include scientific evaluations by his successors of the controls and nature of the production and destruction of blood cells and plasma components. Minot was, in essence, a naturalist whose interests included the organic, environmental, and emotional problems of his patients. He brought to his research and to his medical practice inexhaustible curiosity, a compulsion for accuracy, and the infinite capacity for taking pains that has been called genius.
Quotations:
"The stopping of the Judicial courts, had been blended, in the minds of some people, with the redress of grievances considered only as a mode of awakening the attention of the legislature. "
"Be the same still mountain self and mountain peace no matter what the external conditions. "
"The possession of land seems to be a greater gratification to the pride and independence of men. "
Membership
Minot was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1937 and was a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a number of foreign societies.
National Academy of Sciences
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United States
American Philosophical Society
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United States
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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United States
Personality
Although attention to detail suited Minot's temperament, in carrying out this regimen he was greatly aided by his wife, who was especially helpful in minimizing interruptions of his professional activities.
Minot was a proper Bostonian, but he went his way unconcerned when that way was not the accepted one. In his conversation, the description of any event required that it first be placed in detail in its setting. This compulsion could greatly prolong a five-minute scheduled conference.
Minot had hobbies in which he took pleasure and pride. He grew irises of prize-winning beauty in his flower garden in Brookline, Massachusetts, and as a summer sailor, he was familiar with the coast of Maine and the warmer waters south of Cape Cod. His private life centered on his family and friends, but on occasion students, professional associates, or foreign visitors found a warm welcome in his home.
Physical Characteristics:
At the age of thirty-five, Minot developed severe diabetes. Placed under the care of Elliott P. Joslin, he began a course of rigorous dietary restriction, virtually the only treatment then known. In spite of his illness and a progressive loss in weight, Minot continued to work. At the age of thirty-five, Minot developed severe diabetes. Placed under the care of Elliott P. Joslin, he began a course of rigorous dietary restriction, virtually the only treatment then known. In spite of his illness and a progressive loss in weight, Minot continued to work. The discovery of insulin announced in 1922 by Frederick G. Banting and Charles H. Best of Toronto, saved his life. Adhering to a carefully measured diet balanced by precise injections of insulin, a treatment that continued for life, he made a good recovery. In spite of excellent medical care in his middle fifties, Minot developed some of the vascular and neurological complications of diabetes. In 1947, he had a stroke that paralyzed his left side.
Interests
growing flowers
Connections
On June 29, 1915, Minot married Marian Linzee Weld, a distant cousin. Their children were Marian Linzee, Elizabeth Whitney, and Charles Sedgwick.