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44th APS President (1971-1972)
John R. Brobeck
(b. 1914)
In his past president's address (10) Brobeck identified cycles in medical
education and in physiology since the time of Boerhaave in the early
eighteenth century. In comparing physiologists with seekers after the
mythical unicorn, he predicted that despite the uncertainties occasioned by
recent changes in the medical curriculum, the cyclic curve representing the
number of unicorn hunters was again on the rise and that physiology would
have its renaissance. His closing paragraph is especially relevant to the
mission of APS "to promote the increase of physiological knowledge and its
utilization" as we look forward to our second century:
"For almost 300 years physiology has been a powerful science. Its
strength is drawn in part from the inherent interest of biological
mechanisms and processes, but also in part from the utility an understanding
of these processes finds in medicine and the related professions. We must
not be simplistic about our discipline. Intellectual curiosity does not need
to be our only reason for existence. Neither is a practical application
enough to insure the perpetuation of the science. The two go together---the
history of even our most distinguished forefathers shows that they do. We
can well be guided by their experience."
Brobeck's professional career has involved only three institutions, or
four if Wheaton (Illinois) College is included. After graduating from
college in 1936, he spent three years at the Institute of Neurology of
Northwestern University in Chicago, where he received the Ph.D. degree in
1939. He was then able to continue his education at the School of Medicine
at Yale University and was awarded an M.D. degree in March 1943. On the
first day of April he began an association with John Fulton's Laboratory of
Physiology at Yale that continued until 1952, when Brobeck moved to the
Philadelphia area as professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology
of the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He was also
chairman of the Graduate Group Committee in Physiology. At that time the
university included also another department of physiology in the Graduate
School of Medicine. Julius Comroe had made it one of the strongest
departments in the country. In 1957, however, Comroe resigned from his
positions at Pennsylvania to take up his new responsibilities at the
University of California in San Francisco. Two years later, Robert Forster
became chairman of this department. Brobeck meanwhile held office in the
School of Medicine until 1970. He then resigned so that the two departments
could be brought together under Forster's direction. From 1970 until his
official retirement in 1982, Brobeck held the title of Herbert C. Rorer
Professor in the Medical Sciences.
Brobeck wrote of his training in science and his scientific interests:
"Although my training took place in the laboratories of three world-class
scientists, Stephen Walter Ranson at Northwestern University and John
Farquhar Fulton and C. N. H. Long at Yale University, the predominant
influence on my career as an investigator and teacher was not the heads of
the laboratories so much as the younger persons they attracted to work with
them. At Northwestern these included principally H. W. Magoun, our preceptor
in stereotaxic surgery, and Frank Harrison, George Clark, and Albert W.
Hetherington, fellow graduate students. At Yale, where for four years I was
a medical student, Jay and Helen Murphy Tepperman, with other students and
research fellows, continued my education in experimental science. It was
Donald Henry Barron, however, then newly appointed as associate professor of
physiology, who most largely contributed to my understanding of the academic
life, the responsibilities and opportunities open to teachers of science,
and the international community of physiologists. Two other names should be
mentioned, although I never worked or published with either. E. F. Adolph of
Rochester, through his monograph on Physiological Regulation (1943),
turned my interest in that direction. And Merkel H. Jacobs, senior member of
this department when I arrived here in 1952, introduced me to membrane
phenomena I previously had not considered. Finally, I remain grateful to my
teachers at Wheaton (Illinois) College, where my formal training in science
began in a Christian context that continues as an important part of my
life."
"In celebration of the bicentennial of the founding of what became this
school of medicine, in 1965 William S. Yamamoto and I edited
Physiological Controls and Regulations, with chapters written mainly by
current or former members of our faculty. The introductory chapter,
"Exchange, control, and regulation," expressed by own research interests
(9). In particular, I have been studying control of energy exchange and
energy balance. Having learned from my own observations and the work of
other laboratories that stimulation or lesions of the hypothalamus may alter
body temperature regulation, food intake, body weight, or motor output, I
proposed integration of these several variables into patterns of energy
exchange. The basis for the integration might be thermal signals. In adult
animals this integration usually leads to a balance between intake and
expenditure and consequently to a stable body weight. Publications offering
evidence for this proposal began with the first on my bibliography (1) and
continued with the Yale series of papers (2-4), with Anand (5, 6), and with
the paper with Gladfelter (8). In 1960 and again in 1981, I was given the
privilege of summarizing my views on this subject at, first, the Laurentian
Hormone Conference (7) and, second, a symposium on The Body Weight
Regulatory System: Normal and Disturbed Mechanisms in Italy (10)."
Elected to membership in APS in 1943, Brobeck's first assignment was as
chairman of the Education Committee in 1960. From 1963 to 1972 he served as
chairman of the Editorial Board of Physiological Reviews. He was
elected to Council in 1967 and became president elect in 1970. In 1980 he
received the Ray G. Daggs Award. He wrote of his experiences as an office
holder of APS:
"It is embarrassing to confess that my first responsibility with the
Society was a complete fiasco, and terribly frustrating. In 1960 when I was
asked to serve as chairman of the Education Committee, I did not know what
the committee was doing, what it should do, or what it might do.
Consequently I presided rather vaguely over meetings, while Ray Daggs kept
everything in order and managed the several projects the committee had
earlier initiated. It was a relief to me, and probably to Ray, when I had to
resign to go on sabbatical leave to Taiwan in 1962."
"While I was president in 1971, the Council began to plan how to honor
Dr. Daggs on his retirement in 1973 and formally invited Orr E. Reynolds
(coeditor of this volume) to continue in his position of education officer
and assistant executive secretary, in the expectation that two years later
he would succeed Ray in the combined office of executive
secretary-treasurer. Conditions of the appointment were summarized in a
two-page letter to Orr. In his reply he wrote, simply, "I am very honored by
the Society's offer and most pleased to accept the conditions as expressed
in your letter." This decision was no doubt the most significant of the
years I was associated with the Council and in my judgment one of the most
important of the twenty-five years covered by this history of the Society."
Wheaton College has conferred three honors on Brobeck: the Distinguished
Service Award of the Alumni Association (1953), a Centennial Award (1959),
and the degree doctor of laws (1960). In 1959 he received a Centennial Merit
Award from Northwestern University. He is a member of the American Society
for Clinical Investigation, the Halsted Society, AAAS (Boston) (1969), and
NAS (1975). In 1962-63 he and most of his family, with a grant from the
China Medical Board of New York, were able to spend nine months at the
National Defense Medical Center in Taipei, Taiwan. They visited also the
major medical centers in Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Bangkok, and New
Delhi, India.
After he had summarized his training, research interests, and
participation in affairs of the APS as noted above, Brobeck concluded by
writing that what most of his friends seem to remember about him is that in
spring, summer, and fall he rides a bicycle from Swarthmore to the
university and that he was born and reared in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
Selected Publications
1. Magoun, H. W., F. Harrison, J. R. Brobeck, and S. W. Ranson.
Activation of heat loss mechanisms by local heating of the brain. J.
Neurophysiol. 1: 101-114, 1938.
2. Brobeck, J. R., J. Tepperman, and C. N. H. Long. Experimental
hypothalamic hyperphagia in the albino rat. Yale J. Biol. Med. 15:
831-853, 1943.
3. Tepperman, J., J. R. Brobeck, and C. N. H. Long. The effects of
hypothalamic hyperphagia and of alterations in feeding habits on the
metabolism of the albino rat. Yale J. Biol. Med.. 15: 855-874, 1943.
4. Brobeck, J. R., J. Tepperman, and C. N. H. Long. The effects of
experimental obesity upon carbohydrate metabolism. Yale J. Biol. Med.
15: 893-904, 1943.
5. Anand, B. K., and J. R. Brobeck. Localization of a "feeding center" in
the hypothalamus of the rat. Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med. 77: 323-324,
1951.
6. Anand, B. K., and J. R. Brobeck. Hypothalamic control of food intake
in rats and cats. Yale J. Biol. Med. 24: 123-140, 1951.
7. Brobeck, J. R. Food and temperature. Recent Prog. Horm. Res.
16: 439-459, 1960.
8. Gladfelter, W. E., and J. R. Brobeck. Decreased spontaneous locomotor
activity in the rat induced by hypothalamic lesions. Am. J. Physiol.
203: 811-817, 1962.
9. Brobeck, J. R. Exchange, control, and regulation. In: Physiological
Controls and Regulations, edited by W. S. Yamamoto and J. R. Brobeck.
Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 1965, p. 1-13.
10. Brobeck, J. R. A reconsideration of the "Biological Clock in the
Unicorn." Physiologist 15: 327-337, 1972.
11. Brobeck, J. R. Models for analysing energy balance in body weight
regulation. In: The Body Weight Regulatory System: Normal and Disturbed
Mechanisms, edited by L. A. Cioffi et al. New York: Raven, 1981, chapt.
1, p. 1-9.
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