30 Facts About George Whipple

George Hoyt Whipple was an American physician, pathologist, biomedical researcher, and medical school educator and administrator.

George Whipple was born to Ashley Cooper George Whipple and Frances Anna Hoyt in Ashland, New Hampshire.

Whipple's father died from pneumonia or typhoid fever when George was just shy of two years old.

George Whipple even credited his love for the outdoors as a contributor to his successes in work, study, and teaching.

The interactions George Whipple had with biochemists Russell Henry Chittenden and Lafayette Mendel during his senior year at Yale left an indelible mark on his life and career.

In 1901, under the advice, persuasion, and guidance of his mother, George Whipple attended medical school at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Under the mentorship of William Welch, Eugene Opie, and William McCallum, George Whipple was inspired to correlate clinical illness and disease, to the tissue findings discovered on autopsy.

Ultimately, George Whipple accepted the position which shaped his career aspirations to become a pathologist.

In 1905, George Whipple joined the pathology department at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as an assistant in pathology.

George Whipple was promoted successively to Assistant, Instructor, Associate and associate professor in pathology until he left in 1914.

In 1911, George Whipple went to Vienna to study hepatic portal vein blood flow and its effects on hepatic functions in the dog with Hans Meyer.

In 1914, at 34 years old, George Whipple married Katherine Ball Waring of Charleston, South Carolina.

George Whipple was appointed Professor of Research Medicine, and Director of the Hooper Foundation for Medical Research at the University of California San Francisco medical school.

George Whipple was dean of that medical school in 1920 and 1921.

In 1921, through the persistence of University of Rochester President Benjamin Rush Rhees, George Whipple agreed to become a Professor and Chairman of Pathology, and the founding Dean of the yet-to-be-built medical school.

George Whipple found this offer attractive because it would fulfil his passion to create a program which fostered an exchange between clinical and preclinical disciplines.

George Whipple categorically discriminated against African-American students during his time as dean, and would send a form letter to applicants rejecting their admission and requesting they apply elsewhere.

In 1953, at 75 years old, George Whipple retired from the Deanship, and retirement from the university would follow in 1955.

George Whipple spent his retirement years dabbling in pathology department and medical school activities at the University of Rochester, but returned to his outdoors-man roots, filling his time with pheasant hunting, salmon fishing on the Margaree River, and tarpon fishing off the coast in Florida.

George Whipple died in 1976 at the age of 97 and his ashes were scattered in Rochester's Mount Hope Cemetery.

George Whipple named this abnormality lipodystrophia intestinalis, and correctly pointed to the bacterial cause of the lipid deposits, resulting in the disease being named Whipple's disease.

When Whipple first joined Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as an assistant, he worked under William H Welch, focusing on the repair and regeneration of liver cells.

George Whipple's research elucidated the route by which bile pigments enter circulation and produce jaundice in various parts of the body.

At the University of Rochester, George Whipple's research focus became studying the various factors in diets which contributed to recovery of long-term anemia, particularly in anemic dogs.

George Whipple would go on to show that foods derived from animal tissue, and cooked apricots had a positive effect of increasing red blood cells during anemia.

In 1937, Whipple collaborated with William B Hawkins to determine the life-span of the red blood cell in dogs.

Between 1939 and 1943 Leon L Miller and Whipple collaborated to study the hepato-toxic effects of chloroform anesthesia on dogs.

George Whipple was able to characterize amino acid mixtures that could satisfy the metabolic requirements necessary to maintain weight, nitrogen balance, and plasma protein and hemoglobin regeneration in the dog.

George Whipple's experiments were planned exceedingly well, and carried out very accurately, and consequently their results can lay claim to absolute reliability.

George Whipple received honorary doctorates from several American and international Universities, including the Universities of Athens and Glasgow.