News From Senior Physiologists 

Letters to Douglas Stuart

Roger TannerThies writes: “My life changed when I retired five years ago at age 65. I moved to a nearby state, remarried, and my wife and I merged our last names into one. Fortunately, all my life I have been able to ‘follow my bliss’ (Joseph Campbell) and do what I really wanted to do. My advice to younger physiologists in order to have a fulfilling life is to follow your heart more than your head. Let me sketch my career as an example. “I have been a teacher all my life. I taught nature study at Boy Scout camp in high school. I was a lab assistant in biology courses the year after I took them in college. In graduate school at The Rockefeller University I crossed the street to assist in Cornell Medical School physiology laboratories. My first position was in the Physiology Department at Washington University in St. Louis for a few years. I lectured and was responsible for cardiovascular dog labs and frog sciatic nerve labs. Then after a research fellowship in London for a year I took my family to Uganda for two years to teach East African medical students. I remained as a teacher of medical and other health professional students in Oklahoma for the next 31 years. Fifteen years ago I took a sabbatical year to teach in China. I taught the whole physiology course to 33 medical students in English. While in Oklahoma I also studied for an M.A. in Human Relations, took education courses and was certified to teach high school science, and did short physiology review courses all over North America.
    “I have always been a teacher more than an investigator. I was privileged to be acquainted with many Nobel Prize winners, who were often great teachers as well as incisive scientists. In my research I made modest contributions to understanding neuromuscular transmission and spinal pathways for pain, but others would have probably discovered such things a few years later. My pride and joy is the many lives I have touched as a teacher, mentor, guide and friend. People have been more important to me than science or medical advances. Teaching is a way of expressing our natural compassion and care for others. I treasure my teachers and mentors, and my teaching has expressed my love for my students. My mentors were like parents, and many of my students were like children.
    “If you follow your bliss, then anything you give will be returned many-fold. I went overseas with an eagerness to share what I knew. But I received more than I gave; those were some of the happiest and most exciting years of my life. What a gift to be able to live in another culture and be a citizen of the world. How fortunate we are as physiologists that our ‘work’ can be so satisfying and meaningful.
    “My satisfactions since I retired come from renovating the old farm house that I share with my wife, growing much of our own fruits, berries and vegetables, and doing co-mediation between couples over child custody issues. I also substitute teach in all subjects at the local rural high school and am finishing a physiology review book for the Step I examination. We travel and enjoy visiting children and grandchildren across the country. My retirement is not being any less busy but having more choices and flexibility. I seek to savor the moment, which we can all do anytime.”

David A. Prince writes: “I am responding belatedly to your letter in which you request information about my current activities. I am still working full-time at Stanford. From 1970-1989 I chaired the Department of Neurology and then the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences here. During that time I was also involved in clinical activities as a neurologist and ran basic research and training programs, chiefly focused on mechanisms of epileptogenesis. Since stepping down as chair in 1989, I have not been substantially involved in clinical work, but have continued to run both a training grant and a program project grant in epilepsy. My R01 grant is entering its 38th year and has been funded through 2006, and a second R01 grant on interneurons has been in place for the past three years. My time is spent mostly with fellows, reviewing papers, editing manuscripts, and working with undergraduate students who get their honors in Biology by doing a project in our laboratories. The latter turns out to be a most interesting and rewarding experience. My plans are to continue to be active in neuroscience research and training, at least as long as my synapses hold out.
    “You asked for ‘words of wisdom’ to pass on to younger colleagues. One word of advice is to treat all of your colleagues and trainees well and with the utmost respect. You never know where these people will turn up—for example, the last two chairs of our department were individuals I knew as trainees in the clinical and basic neuroscience programs at Stanford. Academic career evolves through a number of stages, extending from duties as a lineman, quarterback and coach to those as a cheerleader, historian and philosopher. I am not quite sure where I fit in this ladder (I’m certainly not a lineman anymore), but I do hope to remain active in some capacity or another for some time to come.”

Paul Webb writes: “I have enjoyed an unconventional life as a physiologist and continue to do so as I turn 80 in December. It all began when I was doing two years of Army service just after WWII. In Alaska I met Loren Carlson who offered me a chance to do thermal physiology at the University of Washington. I wanted to quench my thirst for research for a year, then return to clinical life, but physiology prevailed over internal medicine. I progressed from university to the Air Force Aeromedical laboratory, then to consulting and my own independent laboratory immodestly called Webb Associates in Yellow Springs, OH. The problems I tackled were applied but some of the work led to satisfying basic physiology. Tolerance for extreme heat, body cooling, cold exposure in diving, and energy balance were research topics that arose from aviation, space and undersea medicine. I enjoyed inventing things such as a suitcase-sized life support system for high altitude flying (we did not say ‘space’ in the Air Force before 1958), a new kind of pressure suit, which was an elastic leotard for extravehicular activity, a metabolic rate monitor, and a human calorimeter using an insulated water cooled suit. The idea for the calorimeter came from the situation of an astronaut outside his vehicle. In a vacuum there is no way to dissipate metabolic heat; specific suit layers blocked even radiation. He loses metabolic heat to his water cooled undergarment. The suit calorimeter mimics this. It allows treadmill walking and other sorts of exercise. Body heat loss combined with continuous measurement of respiratory gas exchange produced energy balances over minutes, hours and days. Complete thermal balance during exercise showed the dynamic relationships between heat production, heat loss and body temperatures. I adopted the heretical view that it is heat that is regulated, not temperature. By adding nutrient balance measurement over weeks of time I could look at energy balances during under-eating, over-eating and balanced intake. The Webb Associates laboratory ran for 25 years, and then expired from financial malnutrition. I went into active retirement 20 years ago. I was invited to take the calorimeter to various laboratories in the US and Europe, looking at 24-hour resting energy expenditure, the energetics of uphill and downhill walking and more. In the past decade I have helped colleagues find support for ideas that interest both of us, for example the study of body heat storage during exercise with muscle temperature added to the usual array to see where the heat is stored. There has even been a revival of interest in my elastic space suit. I am involved in several projects currently, which pleases me. I am on the faculty at Wright State University School of Medicine and I continue to publish. I enjoy home life, marriage and a Corgi. I read, walk and play tennis. One of these days I may slow down, but only if I have to.”

Letter to G. Edgar Folk

Rex L. Jamison writes: “Thank you for your letter asking what I am doing. It brings back memories to hear from someone at the University of Iowa, because I was born and raised in Iowa (Story City) and attended the University of Iowa, which was a wonderful place to learn—perfect for someone from a small town. I had many great teachers who took time to talk with me personally.
    “I have spent most of my career at Stanford, teaching, caring for patients and studying the fascinating mechanisms by which the mammalian renal medulla becomes hypertonic to enable the kidney to form a concentrated urine. In the last six years, I have changed directions and am now directing a prospective, randomized, double blind clinical trial to determine if giving large doses of folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12 to patients with advanced and end stage renal disease, to lower their high plasma homocysteine levels, will reduce their mortality and cardiovascular morbidity. The study is sponsored by the Cooperative Studies Program of the Department of Veteran Affairs. Thirty-six medical centers are participating. We have just completed the enrollment period. We exceeded our target enrollment of 2,006 patients, and have begun a four-year observation period. I have a wonderfully able team of clinical outcomes specialists, statisticians, investigators and nurse coordinators who have worked very well together. It has been a lot of work—but and enriching experience. I found out that clinical outcomes research is no less complex than bench research.”

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