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Pages 415-431

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From page 415... ... Maurice Visscher attend ec! high school ancl Hope College in his home town, and he thought himself fortunate in having stimulating biology teachers in both high school and college. Read the entire page →
From page 416... ... When Visscher was about to graduate from Hope College in 1922, he was encourages! by his biology teacher and inspired by the example of a physician uncle to apply for a scholarship to study medicine or a preclinical science. Read the entire page →
From page 417... ... When he became emeritus in 1970, he moved to another laboratory to continue his physiological research until just before he died of cancer on May I, 1983. When ~W_A v at University College London in the autumn of 1925, Starpartment ot ~hyslology at tne university o~ ~~c;~ Maurice Visscher arrived in Starlina's laboratory J ~ ling had returned to the study of the behavior of the heartTung preparation of a dog he had developed in 1912. Read the entire page →
From page 418... ... Starling ~ ~ r ~ 1ne calculation was not entirely correct tor and Visscher thought the lung metabolism was probably constant and that in the face of the large changes in oxygen consumption by the hearts the lung oven c:ons,~mn . Read the entire page →
From page 419... ... When Starling and Visscher varied both the cardiac output and the aortic pressure, the rate of oxygen consumption was directly proportional to the diastolic volume and therefore to the diastolic length of the ventricle's muscle fibers. In a failing heart there was only a random relation between diastolic volume and work done, but here again there was a linear relation between the rate of oxygen consumption and cliastolic ventricular volume. Read the entire page →
From page 420... ... While he was still in Chicago, Visscher had found in a few experiments that adding a digitalis glucoside increased both the heart's oxygen consumption and efficiency at constant diastolic volume. Soon after he arrived in Minnesota, Visscher had Gordon K Read the entire page →
From page 421... ... In the ISSOs and IS9Os Heiclenhain had demonstrated that intestinal absorption cannot be attributed to osmotic and diffusive forces alone. Homologous serum, he showed, is absorbed by a tied-off loop of intestine of an anesthetized dog, although the serum has almost the same composition as the plasma into which it is absorbed. Read the entire page →
From page 422... ... Bicarbonate concentration in the luminal fluid rose from zero to a concentration above that in plasma. Magnesium ions are also slowly absorbed, and when Ingraham and Visscher placed a mixture of magnesium chloride and sodium chloride in a similar loop, they saw that the sodium concentration fell to 5 mN, far below plasma concentration. Read the entire page →
From page 423... ... Visscher establisher! good working relations with Owen Wangensteen, head of Minnesota's Department of Surgery, and young surgeons in training worked in Visscher's department, bringing with them their surgical skilIs.5 Visscher, who had been trained in an era when no physiologist was happy unless he was up to his elbows in a 60-kilogram anesthetized dog, couicI begin to use dogs with chronically prepared Thiry-VelIa loops of the small intestine or gastric pouches. Read the entire page →
From page 424... ... When luminal osmotic pressure was low, there was a net flow of water from lumen to blood, and when luminal osmotic pressure was high, the net flow was from blood to lumen. Using his Dc,O data, Visscher calculated that unidirectional flux of water from blood to lumen was essentially independent of luminal osmotic pressure, whereas flux from lumen to blood was high when luminal osmotic pressure was low and low when luminal osmotic pressure was high. Read the entire page →
From page 425... ... In the great floor! of enthusiasm for this work, only a few remembered that Maurice Visscher deserved credit for starting it all. Read the entire page →
From page 426... ... 426 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS of Physiology that under his leadership trained thirty-six Ph.D. students and provided research experience for more than fifty residents in training from clinical departments. Read the entire page →
From page 427... ... MAU RIC E BOLKS VISSCH E R 427 surprised if Maurice dic3 not make a significant contribution at least to design ant! interpretation of any investigation in which he was involvect." Maurice Visscher's most remarkable administrative accomplishment at Minnesota was to foster close relations between his Department of Physiology and the Department of Surgery, an accomplishment all the more remarkable when one remembers that in most meclical schools in the Uniter! Read the entire page →
From page 428... ... Maurice Visscher abandoned the Calvinistic faith of his Dutch forefathers, and he stopped believing in an authoritarian underpinning of ethics provided by revealed religion. "Science and technology," he wrote, "contribute to rejection of values of yesterday."6 lather Oh ] Read the entire page →
From page 429... ... Maurice Visscher believed the antivivisection movement was a major threat to unfettered scientific inquiry, and for forty years he was an active and effective opponent of restrictive antivivisection legislation in the United States. As a board member and then vice-president and president of the National Society for Medical Research, the medical scientists' organization for combatting antivivisection, Visscher was tireless in attacking what he called "little old ladies of Read the entire page →
From page 430... ... Maurice Visscher fervently believed that he hac! a duty as a citizen as well as a scientist, and it would probably be easier to list good causes, if any could be found, other than those into which he threw himself with irresistible energy. Read the entire page →
From page 431... ... The result is that he can be ~ ~ � arm ~ _ more than a little vexing at times."7 Those who dealt with Maurice Visscher on other fields of action sometimes agreed with the clean. Maurice Visscher was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1956. Read the entire page →

From page 415...

... Maurice Visscher attend ec! high school ancl Hope College in his home town, and he thought himself fortunate in having stimulating biology teachers in both high school and college.