[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 59 (Friday, April 11, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E747-E748]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   IN MEMORY OF DR. ARTHUR C. GUYTON

                                 ______
                                 

                   HON. CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING

                             of Mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 10, 2003

  Mr. PICKERING. Mr. Speaker, Mississippi lost a research treasure last 
week with the passing of Dr. Arthur C. Guyton. His is a legacy of 
medical excellence going beyond Mississippi and beyond America to be 
recognized internationally for his gifts to science and education.
  He began his life in Oxford, Mississippi, on September 8, 1919, born 
to the late Dr. and Mrs. Billy S. Guyton. His father--an eye, ear, nose 
and throat specialist--was also dean of the two-year medical school on 
the Oxford campus. His mother, Kate, had taught mathematics and physics 
as a missionary in China.
  He graduated from University High School with the highest academic 
average in his class and entered Ole Miss in 1936, completed his 
undergraduate work in three years, and again graduated at the top of 
his class.
  As a medical student at Harvard, his idea of creating a way to 
measure and differentiate ions in solutions resulted in a professor 
turning over an entire lab to the promising young scientist. His senior 
year in medical school, he and his future wife Ruth Weigle began a 
serious courtship which culminated in marriage on June 12, 1943.
  He began a surgical internship at Massachusetts General Hospital 
shortly after his marriage. His training was interrupted by a call to 
serve in the US Navy at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda 
and later at Camp Detrick, Maryland, where his work earned him an Army 
Commendation Citation.
  After World War II ended, he returned to Massachusetts General to 
complete his residency. Less than a year later, he was stricken with 
polio which would leave his right leg and shoulder paralyzed.
  During a nine-month recovery at Warm Springs, Georgia, he designed a 
special leg brace, a hoist for moving patients from bed to chair to 
bathtub, and a motorized wheelchair controlled by an electric ``joy 
stick.'' For these devices, he later received the U.S. Presidential 
Citation for the Development of Aids for the Handicapped in 1956.
  In 1947, the Guytons moved back to Oxford where he taught 
pharmacology in the two year medical school. In 1948, he was named 
chairman of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics.
  Modern research on and treatments of hypertension stand on the early 
work of Dr. Guyton. In the 50s, he described the ``permissive'' heart 
to explain cardiac output. The heart would pump only what was delivered 
to it through the veins. When body tissues need extra blood flow to 
carry required oxygen and other nutrients, the blood vessels in those 
tissues expand or dilate, to allow increased flow. The control of 
cardiac output, he decided, was vested in the periphery. This 
completely overturned the conventional wisdom that the heart itself 
controlled cardiac output.
  A little later, he succeeded in measuring the pressure of the 
interstitium, the fluid between cells which makes up about one-sixth of 
the body. No one had been able to measure it before, and few scientists 
were ready to accept Dr. Guyton's finding of a negative, or 
subatmospheric, pressure. In 1966, an early computer model gave Dr. 
Guyton the answer to the question he'd been asking since he was a 
medical student. He wanted to show the effect of an increase in fluid 
volume and had predicted that the extra volume would cause an initial 
rise in pressure which would then fall back part way toward normal. 
That didn't happen. The pressure fell all the way back to normal. This 
led to the ``infinite gain'' theory which said that fluid volume 
control by the kidney can be so powerful as a longterm regulator of 
blood pressure that other systems can only regulate pressure short-term 
and will eventually be overpowered by the key controller. These 
revolutionary theories flew in the face of conventional wisdom, but 
time and the research of thousands, has vindicated Dr. Guyton.
  His now famous and widely used textbook, Textbook of Medical 
Physiology, had its beginnings in Oxford. He decided that the text the 
students were using was unsatisfactory, and he began reading in diverse 
areas of physiology. In summarizing his reading, he wrote handouts for 
each section of the course and realized he had the core of a complete 
textbook. In the decades since, it has become the best selling 
physiology text in the world and quite possibly the most widely used 
medical textbook of any kind. In addition he has published hundreds of 
papers sharing the results of his research. And yet he always had time 
for students--for the medical students who had trouble understanding a 
portion of their lecture and for the graduate students who came from 
all over the world to study with the famous Dr. Guyton.
  The legacy of Arthur Guyton goes beyond his contributions to science 
and mankind. He

[[Page E748]]

and his wife reared ten children, all doctors: Dr. David L. Guyton, 
Professor of Ophthalmology, Johns Hopkins University School of 
Medicine; Dr. Robert A. Guyton, Professor of Surgery and Chief of the 
Cardiothoracic Division, Emory University, School of Medicine; Dr. John 
R. Guyton, Associate Professor of Medicine, Duke University; Dr. Steven 
W. Guyton, cardiothoracic surgeon at Virginia Mason Clinic, Seattle; 
Dr. Cathy Greenberger, internist in Boston, Massachusetts; Dr. Jean 
Gispen, rheumatologist in Oxford, Mississippi; Dr. Douglas C. Guyton, 
anesthesiologist in Phoenix, Arizona; Dr. James L. Guyton, orthopedic 
surgeon at Campbell's Clinic in Memphis, Tennessee; Dr. Thomas S. 
Guyton, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, University of Florida 
School of Medicine, Gainesville; and Dr. Gregory P. Guyton, resident in 
orthopedics at University of Iowa School of Medicine.
  Over the past six decades, medical science has recognized the 
contributions of Arthur C. Guyton. Today, we mourn his passing but 
salute his many accomplishments. He is a Mississippi success story: 
born and educated in Mississippi, he returned to the Magnolia State to 
teach and research. The impact of Dr. Guyton's work on the present and 
future of Mississippi's health care community is immeasurable. Arthur 
Guyton was a blessing to Mississippi. He will be missed; but he will be 
remembered.

                          ____________________