News From Senior Physiologists

As originally published in The Physiologist
Volume 45, Number 6, December 2002, page 522-524

Letter to Douglas Stuart
    Jose Segundo writes: “It’s not quite by return post that I answer the APS’s and your cordial message for my birthday but, you must agree, better late than never and, anyway, these lines are no less sincere and heartfelt. The delay is due to my recently spending several months in Montevideo, where I am now, and get my mail about once a month.
    “So please convey my many, many thanks to the APS and your colleagues for their friendly wishes. Needless to say, many thanks go to you, too. 
    “Cordially, your octogenarian friend and colleague.”

Letters to Novera Herbert Spector
    S. P. Masouredis writes: “Thank you and the Society for your congratulatory letter on the occasion of my 80th birthday and for the invitation to write a note for The Physiologist.
    “I must confess your letter was totally unexpected. At the time of my election to the American Physiological Society in 1957 I had published only one paper in the American Journal of Physiology, in 1953, which compared the intravascular and extravascular distribution of iodide-131 in the guinea pig and of 1-131 labeled rabbit globulin in the guinea pig and rabbit. However, I had published some 10 papers in other journals some of which involved physiological studies, such as, blood flow in the human leukemic bone marrow, comparative behavior of l-131 and C-14 labeled albumin in man. My experimental work drifted into other disciplines, primarily immunology and hematology.
    “Even though I published only one paper in the Society’s journals, I prized my membership in the American Physiological Society. My respect and admiration for physiology developed while in medical school in the mid 40’s. The only medical textbook that fascinated me was Best&Taylor. In addition, ideas such as Claude Bernard’s “milieu interne” and Walter Cannon’s concept of homeostasis, which provided explanations and understanding of function were so much more satisfying than structural studies. My exposure to physiological thinking was reinforced by two professors during medical school at the University of Michigan. One, Louis Newburgh, professor of medicine, who in his small group sessions with students, analyzed clinical problems. It was fascinating to watch him demonstrate how the application of basic science in a rigorous and quantitative fashion could lead to a more satisfying understanding of the clinical problem. Dr. Newburgh’s expertise was in ciassic energy metabolism, nutrition, heat exchange, insensible water loss and obesity. The other was Fred Coller, professor of surgery. I expected surgery to be a specialty concerned only with procedures and techniques. To my surprise I found a surgeon in 1944 talking about salt and water balance and pre- and post-operative care based on physiological principles. I was also fortunate while in medical school to discover Physiological Reviews and was impressed with the scholarly discussion of many interesting physiological topics. With such an exposure one can appreciate my respect for the physiological sciences.
    “After medical school I went to Berkeley to learn about radioisotopes and obtained a PhD in medical physics. Most of my subsequent publications exploited radioisotopes in immunological and hematological studies.
    “I have enjoyed my retirement. I have always enjoyed working with wood and using tools. When I was very young, elementary school, a family friend who owned a grocery store saved wooden fruit crates for me. With Woolworth dime store tools, which were inexpensive and worked very badly, I was able to dismantle the boxes, remove the nails and make simple toys, such as wooden boats with rubber band-powered paddle wheels. It was and still is a joy to make things with your hands, a skill that was very useful in my research.
    “On retirement I was able to devote much more time to wood working. I embarked on furniture making and learned many new skills, such as how to make tambour doors. With three grandchildren I began to devote more time to making toys out of wood. Toys made from wood are so much more attractive and more friendly to the touch than the many toys on the market made from plastic and other synthetic materials, especially if one can find plans for old 19th century toys, such as games, rocking horses and doll houses. I still own a 48-year old Sears table saw, and up to now I still have all my 10 fingers.
    “Both my wife, Marion, and I love to travel. Travel has been very important in my professional career. I was fortunate to attend and participate in many international meetings. I have gotten to know many friends and colleagues in many European countries. It is always a pleasure to be able to meet such old friends in many of the countries we visit during our travels. A high point in our travels was the opportunity to take our children and grandchildren to visit the villages of my parents in Greece. We all went to the island of Chios to visit the village where my mother was born and then to the southern Peloponese to visit the village of my father on the slope of Mt. Taigitos. On our last visit to Paris I visited the famous Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise to look for the grave of Claude Bernard who is buried there. I found the graves of many famous people, Chopin, Sarte, and Collete but was unable to find Claude Bernard. This was due in part to the fact that my daughter and the granddaughters had the map showing the location of the gravesites, since my granddaughters were determined to find the grave site of the rock star, Jim Morrison. Rather then being upset at our failure to find Claude Bernard we now have an excuse to plan another trip to Paris.
    “It is difficult to find the appropriate words of wisdom after these many years. For what they are worth I would say: always do your best, try to appreciate and seize the opportunities that come your way, have a good time, and most importantly enjoy your work.”

J.H.U. Brown writes: “I was surprised and delighted to receive the beautiful plaque on my fiftieth year with APS. I have almost lost contact as I switched fields. After becoming chairman of the Physiology Department at Emory Medical School, I became a Director at NIH and then Associate Administrator in HSMHA. Both related to medicine but were concerned with instrument development, etc. At that time I formed with Biomedical Engineering Society and turned my attention in that direction. Although I am a physiologist I was proud to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
    “During my time at HSMHA I was fortunate to manage the project for NIH which produced the first personal computer (LINC) as documented in the Museum of Computer Sciences. I reached retirement age at that time and moved to San Antonio as Director of the Research Consortium, which was designed to unite biological and physical sciences. Three years later I was offered the position of Associate Provost of the University of Houston. Two projects interested me. In conjunction with NASA and Sumitomo (Japan) we devised and tested a new medical record system which would put 4.5 megabytes of information on a credit card. I became interested in two non-profit organizations. We provided information about the formation of small for profit business (many scientists were in the group) and Executive Service Corps, which served as an advisor to non-profit companies in securing patents, etc. I became Chairman of the 70 member chapter which had been the best in the nation and later the District Director to an area of several chapters.
    “I am now 84 and still working. I have written several books in the fields mentioned above since retirement and still counsel in small business areas and have some 50 clients per month on the Internet.”

Letter to Karlman Wasserman

Harold James “Jeremy” Swan writes: “I turned 80 on June 1, 2002. Born in Sligo on Ireland’s west coast in 1922, I graduated from St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School (Univ. of London) in 1945. After Boards in Medicine (M.R.C.P.) and military service in Iraq, I joined Henry Barcroft FRS in 1948 as a research associate in the study of the circulation in the limbs in man. To Barcroft, the kindest man I have ever known, I owe my career in research. I published my first paper, ‘On the Action of Noradrenalin on the Human Circulation,’ in 1949 in Lancet. Barcroft honored me as co-author of his ‘Sympathetic Control of Human Blood Vessels. Monographs of the Physiological Society.’ No.1 (1953). It is interesting to note, half a century later, that we had reported an anomalous response in calf blood flow to increasing concentrations on intraarterial adrenalin, and suggested the transient initial vasodilatation might be due to liberation of a second transmitter ‘when adrenalin reaches the periphery it causes the momentary liberation of a vasodilator substance from the arterioles which is swept on and causes transient dilatation of the pre-capillary-sphincters’ (p. 22.-EDRF). H.H. Dale FRS was my thesis advisor for a PhD degree in 1951.
    “I was awarded a two-year position of Research Associate at the Mayo Clinic and the new field of cardiac catheterization under the astute directions and rigorous discipline of Earl H. Wood, to whom I also indebted for any career success I may have enjoyed. I renewed my friendship with John T. Shepherd, also a Barcroft graduate and fellow Irishman. After 14 years, I decided to move on and have spent the subsequent 35 years at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a large community hospital and one of the five teaching hospitals of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine. I became Director of the Division of Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai and Professor of Medicine at UCLA. In that position, I moved from physiological research to a more applied field, namely, clinical cardiology and clinical investigation in cardiovascular diseases. Hence, my academic activities became more appropriate to organizations such as the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association and found myself moving away from the APS.
    “The highlights included: Presidency of American College of Cardiology (1972-1973); Master: The American College of Physicians; Master: The American College of Cardiology; and the James B. Herrick and the Laennec Awards from the American Heart Association. I received an honorary MD degree from Trinity College University of Dublin and honorary fellowships from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. I published my first paper in 1948. My most recent book chapter has just appeared and I have another manuscript in press. Over the years, I have enjoyed a wonderfully productive group of colleagues, including William Ganz, William Parmley, M.M. Laks, James Forrester, George Diamond, Dan Berman, and others. Collectively we published over 1,000 manuscripts from Cedars-Sinai in the course of close to 40 years. My greatest satisfaction comes from my association with Cedars-Sinai where I and my staff enjoyed extraordinary cooperation from the private Attending Staff, the Board of Directors, Hospital Management, the volunteers, and the voluntary community support groups which made possible the organization of a highly productive Division of Cardiology. Finally, with complete retirement in 1994, I anticipated more time at our second home in Sunriver, OR, the pleasures of life in Pasadena, and my rose, flower and vegetable garden. And so it was.
    “But another, more difficult challenge lay ahead. On March 8, 2001, my right leg ‘went out’ and I fell in the shower. Rapid recovery indicated a TIA. I went to my local hospital, walking normally into the emergency room and with no impairment of motor function, and anticipating prompt anti-coagulation. But the admission, evaluation and decision making process was painfully slow. As time passed, I recognized a progressive loss of right motor function. As a consequence, I ended up with a completed stroke and a severe right hemiparesis. The neurologist termed it as ‘dense,’-meaning bad! However, I have my sight, speech, swallowing, and I believe, most of my marbles. But, as W.B. Yeats put it in his poem-1916, ‘All is changed. Changed utterly,’ and indeed, it is, and for the rest of my life. A never-smoker, mild hypertension, slightly overweight, on lipid-lowering drugs, using a calcium-channel blocker and intermittent aspirin. Nevertheless, it happened.
    “A lot of my thoughts now go to relearning elementary motor function, neural tracts and reconnect neurons. If that really does occur post-stroke, it takes a darn long time. However, my spirits are good and I remain not only optimistic for a further improvement, but remarkably accepting of my limitations, since I have so much—a loving supporting wife and family whose care and affection have carried me so well.”

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