Minot completed his B.A. in 1908, and obtained his M.D. degree in 1912 from the Harvard Medical School. Between 1913 and 1915, he worked in the william Henry Howell's lab at the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, MD., studying blood thinning proteins, such as antithrombin. In 1915, he secured a junior position on the medical staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he started research on blood anemia. During the first world war, he served as a surgeon in for the US Army. As part of those duties, he worked with Alice Hamilton to understand what was causing workers at a munitions plant in New Jersey to become ill. They eventually discovered that skin contact with TNT led to the sicknesses.