In Tribute: Past Rovenstine Lecturer Arthur C. Guyton,
M.D. — 1919-2003 Candace
E. Keller, M.D.
Speaker of the House of Delegates
|
Arthur
C. Guyton, M.D., in 1967, when he was the Emery
A. Rovenstine Memorial Lecturer at the ASA Annual
Meeting. |
In April 2003, renowned physiologist and past E.A. Rovenstine
Memorial Lecturer Arthur C. Guyton, M.D., ended his
long sojourn in this world. Dr. Guyton and his wonderful
wife, Ruth, both died following a two-car crash north
of Jackson, Mississippi. His legacy includes not only
thousands of students and trainees worldwide but also
his 10 children, all of whom are physicians. Recalling
his father, Thomas S. Guyton, M.D., an anesthesiologist
in Memphis, Tennessee, described him as “a very
self-assured man” who believed that “he
could learn about anything and use his knowledge to
do about anything he wanted to do.”
And indeed he did. Born in Oxford, Mississippi, Arthur
Guyton graduated at the top of his class from the University
of Mississippi and entered Harvard Medical School in
1939. Following his military service in World War II,
Dr. Guyton returned to Massachusetts General Hospital
to complete his surgery training, but contracted polio
in 1947. The disease left him with residual paralysis,
and after a period of recovery, he went back to Oxford,
Mississippi, to begin a career in research.
In 1948, he was named chair of the Department of Physiology
and continued to serve as chair of the Department of
Physiology and Biophysics when the medical school was
expanded to a four-year curriculum and relocated to
Jackson in 1955. He served in that position until his
retirement in 1989. As one of the world’s leading
physiologists, his research contributions clarified
and defined the cardiovascular system. In addition,
Dr. Guyton authored the best-selling physiology textbook
of all time, the Textbook of Medical Physiology,
now in its 10th edition and translated into 15 languages.
He received virtually every scientific honor a physiologist
can receive, including the Special Scientific Achievement
Award from the American Medical Association, the William
Harvey Award from the American Society of Hypertension,
the CIBA Award for Research in Hypertension and the
Research Achievement Award of the American Heart Association.
He was president of the American Physiological Society
and the Federation of American Societies of Experimental
Biology. He was editor-in-chief of the International
Review of Physiology and editor of the Cardiovascular
Volume of the International Review of Physiology.
In 1967, Dr. Guyton presented the Emery A. Rovenstine
Memorial Lecture, “The Regulation of Cardiac Output,”
at the ASA Annual Meeting. In 1978, he was invited to
give the William Harvey Lecture for the Royal College
of Physicians in London, honoring the 400th anniversary
of the birth of William Harvey, who first described
the circulation of blood. He was invited to lecture
at universities around the globe, wrote scores of books
and hundreds of scientific papers and edited many journals.
Despite these many accomplishments, it was precisely
as Norman Nelson, M.D., former vice-chancellor at the
University of Mississippi Medical Center, recalled:
“He never closed his door to students, and he
was the only teacher I ever knew to turn down an invitation
to give a prestigious lecture if it conflicted with
his teaching schedule.”
It is the indelible memory of Dr. Arthur Guyton as teacher
that I shall always treasure and recall. His image standing
before my sophomore medical school physiology class
using his wheelchair only as a desk and his crutches
to walk is ingrained forever in my mind as that of a
man with undaunting courage and passionate humanity.
He was a great mentor to us all. Dr. Arthur C. Guyton,
we salute you and celebrate your life and legacy.
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