science · 25 February 1950 · 75 years ago
death
Died 25 Feb 1950 at age 64 (born 2 Dec 1885).
American physician who received (with George Whipple and William Murphy) the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1934 for the introduction of a raw-liver diet to regenerate blood hemoglobin in the treatment of pernicious anemia, which was previously an invariably fatal disease. Later, he helped develop liver extract for oral use (now replaced by vitamin B12 injections). Earlier, during WW I, at the suggestion of Alice Hamilton, pioneer in industrial medicine at Harvard, Minot had investigated the anemia occurring among New Jersey ammunition workers. From studies of their blood, he found that the trinitrotoluene (TNT) used to fill shells acted as a poison, causing destruction of red cells, often producing anemia.
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