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...