Doctor Overcomes Polio to Bring 8--or 10--Children Into Medicine : For Arthur Guyton of Mississippi, a Handicap Isn’t Disabling

Arthur Guyton, the son of a doctor, was a white blur on the campus of Harvard Medical School. “He used to run--not walk, but run--up the stairs,” his wife, Ruth, recalls. Such was his haste to follow in his father’s footsteps.

By the time Guyton turned 26, all his dreams seemed within reach.

He and Ruth had a 2-year-old son and a second child on the way. World War II had interrupted Guyton’s career, but after two years in the Navy, he was back at Massachusetts General Hospital, completing his surgical residency.

It was September, 1946, when Ruth got the call: Her husband had succumbed to the fever he’d been ignoring, and had been placed in isolation. The patient diagnosed himself: Paralytic polio. Two words that would change everything.

A month later, Robert Guyton was born to a father who couldn’t hold him, who remained paralyzed in a hospital bed.

In January, Arthur Guyton was sent to Warm Springs, Ga., to begin eight months of treatment.

Surgeon’s Career Over

He would regain nearly all the use of his right arm and partial use of his lower left arm and left leg. His right leg, left upper arm and shoulder would remain paralyzed. His career as a surgeon was finished.

What to do instead? How to earn a living from a wheelchair? What of the Guytons’ dream of lots of children? What sort of family would they rear now?

Forty years have passed. The questions have long since been answered.

What kind of family did the Guytons rear?

This kind:

David, 42, MD; Robert, 39, MD; John, 38, MD; Steve, 36, MD; Catherine, 35, MD, Jean, 31, MD; Douglas, 30, MD; Jimmy, 26, MD; Thomas, 24, fourth-year medical student. Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, Miami, Duke, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard.

If it is true that many a mother’s fondest dream is to one day refer to her child as “my son, the doctor,” Ruth Guyton, who brought home her 10th child on her 45th birthday, has gotten her wish six times over. Eight, if you count her two daughters. Nine if you count the son who will graduate from Harvard Medical School next spring.

Ten, if 19-year-old Gregory, a premed sophomore at Vanderbilt University, chooses to make it a clean sweep. He says it’s a pretty safe bet.

How does one come up with the money to feed and clothe 10 children, let alone put them through college and medical school?

Arthur Guyton did it the hard way.

He earned it.

Reduced Mobility

Polio had reduced his mobility. It had not affected his ability to do research and to write.

And he wrote:

“Textbook of Medical Physiology.” Seven editions in nine languages. “Function of the Human Body.” Four editions. “Basic Human Physiology: Normal Functions and Mechanisms of Disease.” Three editions. “Structure and Function of the Nervous System.” Two editions.

There are 35 volumes in all, outgrowths of the extensive notes Guyton dictated to his students at the University of Mississippi. He wrote every one of his books in his living room nights and weekends, dictating into a machine.

What else was going on at the Guytons’?

Kickball and bowling.

“We were not quiet,” recalls John, No. 3. “He drew the line at letting us play in the living room while he worked, so we played in the hallway beside it. If any of us had a problem or wanted to talk to him, there was never any suggestion that ‘Daddy’s busy writing, don’t bother him.’ He was right there.”

He was right there, too, in times of mischief. Few of the children’s antics escaped Daddy’s attention.

Do you know where your sons are?

(Yes. Streaking a bridge game at the local sorority.)

Why is there a shortage of toilet paper in this house?

(That isn’t snow on the neighbor’s front lawn.)

Despite the normal mischief, all 10 Guytons managed to stay off the police blotter and on the honor roll; later, the dean’s list. All had A averages. Six were National Merit Scholars.

Each morning, Guyton drove himself to his day job as head of the department of physiology and biophysics at the Medical Center of Ole Miss.

Before polio, he said, “I’d intended to combine surgery with research. Instead, I combined physiology and teaching with research. Surgical practice, teaching, research and clinical work is more than most people can do.”

Afterward, “I no longer had to try to combine two worlds--the scholarly and the practical. At the university, it is all mainly a scholarly world.”

Arthur Guyton had much to live up to at Ole Miss, where his father, Billy Guyton, had been dean of the medical school. His mother, at 20, had gone off to China, where she spent five years teaching physics.

Years later, when a troubled Douglas Guyton, No. 7, took a semester off from college to figure out what to do with his life, he tried to explain his dilemma to his father.

“He couldn’t understand why I wasn’t interested in school, why I didn’t know what to do, why I was moping around trying to decide,” Douglas said.

“Finally I said something about how hard it was being the son of Guyton, how people always said, ‘I knew your brothers and sisters. They were brilliant. You must be brilliant, too.’ I said everyone expects way too much of you.

“He told me it’s not so much a matter of what you’ve been given as it is what you do with what you’ve been given. He said, ‘I was a son of Guyton, too. In time, people will look past that.’ ”

Arthur Guyton spoke from experience.

No certificates, awards or diplomas hang over the metal desk in his office, a sparse, book-jammed cubbyhole in which a pair of ripe bananas are the only ornaments.

Nonetheless, his discoveries in the lab--unraveling the complex relationship between heart function and blood flow, and pinpointing the crucial role of the kidneys in controlling blood pressure--have earned him two honorary degrees and 48 entries in the “Awards” section of his Curriculum Vitae, including the top research prize from the American Heart Assn.

You can find him in “American Men of Science,” “Who’s Who in the South,” “Who’s Who in American Education, “Who’s Who in America,” and “Who’s Who in the World.”

His descriptions of the relationships between blood, veins, heart and kidneys have resulted in the world’s largest mathematical model of the circulatory system, consisting of more than 400 equations. Fed into a computer, the data serve as an increasingly accurate predictor of which laboratory experiments will prove the most useful.

Research has worked out just fine for Arthur Guyton, whose assessment is as spare as his office: “We’ve hit on a few things.”

Widely Respected

Said Robert, No. 2: “It wasn’t until I went to medical school that I really was able to appreciate what he had done. We knew that he was widely respected by the community, his peers and his family. But up until then, it was hard to understand the fact that he was internationally renowned.”

Equally puzzling to his children were the references to Arthur Guyton having overcome a great handicap.

Despite the omnipresent wheelchair and crutches, “It was always a surprise to us whenever anyone suggested our father was handicapped,” Robert said. “As far as we were concerned, he wasn’t.”

Once, shortly after the family had left Warm Springs for Oxford, where Guyton resumed his career as a physiology professor, Ruth Guyton returned home from shopping and was met at the door by an exultant toddler.

“Mommy, guess what!” cried 4-year-old David.

“Daddy walked all the way into town today with only me to fall on!”

In the early days, “it was hard for Arthur to have to patiently direct others to do that which he once could do so well himself,” said Ruth. “It took incredible patience and acceptance. But he’s very much of a realist.”

Ole Miss moved its two-year medical school from Oxford to Jackson in 1955, expanding it to a four-year, degree-granting program. The Guytons, now a family of eight, had to move too.

Designed House

Where to put them all?

Arthur Guyton, a realist, got out his sketch pad, borrowed a few books on architecture, and went to work.

He did the designing.

The kids did the building.

Their father wasn’t without some experience. While recuperating at Warm Springs, Guyton had designed the prototype of the motorized wheelchair, as well as a special hoist and walking brace for polio patients. His inventions, which he shared freely with the world, earned him a presidential citation in 1956, the same year he was named one of the 10 Outstanding Young Men in America.

2 Years to Build

The one-level concrete block house on Meadow Road, with its six bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths, louvered windows and no steps, measures 127 feet from family room to workshop. It took two years to build, and when it was finished, it looked a little naked plunked out there in the middle of 15 acres of meadow and pines.

So the kids added a 50-foot swimming pool and tennis courts.

More and more, the workshop became the setting for family activities.

“When something was broken, Daddy’s theory was, take it apart, see how it works, then figure out how to fix it. That’s how he taught me to approach things,” Douglas said.

“I remember waking up on a Saturday and having Daddy say, ‘You’re going to have to replace the clutch on the tractor today.’ I was barely big enough to pull off the chain. I complained a lot, but the truth is, I liked it. It was a way of dealing with problems that I hope I’ll be able to teach my own kids.”

Built a Television

(Arthur Guyton, in the early days of television, once built himself a TV set, “just to see how it worked,” said his wife.)

One wonders: How much togetherness can a family stand?

More, if its members decide to build a factory to manufacture medical instruments of their own design.

“Daddy was always getting us involved in his projects,” John said. “He always had a fun idea he wanted to try and he invariably got us to work on it.

“One of the key things he did was to start us on projects at an age that was appropriate for kids to be learning and getting excited about things. He started me on electronics when I was in fifth grade. It was probably a little earlier than most people would think of, but he taught us that as children, we could perform jobs often thought of as adult jobs.”

When federal licensing requirements made medical instruments too costly for a family business, the Oxford Instrument Co. folded.

It wasn’t the end of the Guytons’ collaboration, however.

They built boats.

Three fiberglass sailboats, with cabins. One motorboat.

Sold Boat to Faulkner

Arthur Guyton had experience there, too. He had built his own boat while at Harvard, but when he was no longer able to sail it, he sold it to a friend back at Oxford named William Faulkner.

Yes, that William Faulkner. He and Guyton played chess and drank lemonade together. (“Well, I drank lemonade,” Guyton said. “I couldn’t say what was in his glass.” Faulkner beat the pants off him nonetheless, in all but their final game. “By that time,” said his partner, “I’d learned a thing or two about chess.”)

Meanwhile, back at Meadow Road, the bedrooms continued to fill up with babies, even as the back yard blossomed with boats.

Ruth Guyton’s four boys, two girls and four boys arrived over 23 years. “That your grandbaby?” asked an endless succession of store clerks whenever she took little Greg, the youngest Guyton, out shopping.

Family Planning Specialist

By then, Mrs. Guyton, who had graduated Phi Beta Kappa and whose father had been dean of the Yale University Divinity School, had taken to introducing herself at various medical societies her husband presided over as “a specialist in family planning.”

An apt description.

From Ruth Guyton’s memory book:

“You folks belong to Holy Family Church?” asks the new milkman, confident as he rapidly counted heads that he’d just added a family of Catholics to his route.

(“Actually, we’re Protestants.”)

From a well-meaning stranger: “But I thought surely everyone knew about birth control!”

(“We do. We just happen to like children.”)

Here’s Ruth Guyton at the supermarket, pulling one cart and pushing another, both loaded with a half-dozen half-gallons of milk and eight to 10 loaves of bread, among other staples. “Somebody’s having a party!” says the check-out clerk. “Oh, no!” Ruth replies airily. “We just live this way.”

A Family Banquet

Here she is at the furniture store, searching for a dining room table to seat 12. “Oh!” the salesman finally gets the idea, after she rejects all his tables for eight. “You want a banquet table!” It pleases the mother of 10 to remember this as she wipes the plastic tablecloths and dishes out the stew.

Here’s the Wellesley girl and her husband taking the family for a stroll. Here’s the neighbor with the screeching brakes pulling up alongside the processional of bicycles, tricycles, roller skates and strollers. “Say, Arthur,” he bellows across a dusty expanse of highway: “All those yours?”

Such recollections have provided the grist for numerous essays by Mrs. Guyton, a two-time winner of the Mississippi Arts Festival annual essay contest. They also have made her a sought-after speaker at women’s seminars throughout Mississippi.

Ruth Guyton on motherhood:

“Living in the South was great. I could never have stuffed 10 little bodies into snowsuits.”

On economy:

“Nothing ever got thrown out in this house. It just changed closets.”

On discipline:

“We were not strict. We had guidelines and limits, but with that many, you can’t have too many rules or you drive yourself crazy.”

Which begs the question: How do you punish your children from the confines of a wheelchair?

Creatively.

“Arthur’s style of punishment usually took the form of mental isolation,” said his wife. ‘ “You’re restricted,’ he’d say, meaning the offender would not be allowed to speak for five minutes or so. There’s no worse punishment for a child in a big family than that!”

Here’s Robert, on the subject of being one of 10:

“I never felt deprived in any way. I never felt that I wasn’t getting enough attention.”

Lost in Work

There were times, though, when Douglas felt “a little miffed or jealous that Daddy seemed to be lost in his work. He’d come home at 5, immediately eat dinner, and sit down and watch Walter Cronkite. Then he’d go into the living room and start working on his book.”

Douglas felt the most pressure to live up to the family standards.

“There came a point in junior high school when I was so tired of hearing everybody tell me how brilliant all my brothers and sisters were, I began to make it a point to show people I could be just an average guy,” Douglas said.

He kept up his A average; his father insisted on it. “But I studied for the grades, not the knowledge. I became a slacker, and it hurt me later on.”

When Douglas reached his sophomore year at Ole Miss, “I realized I’d never made a choice to go into medicine. I simply fell into the track of all my brothers. I said I wanted to be a doctor, but I had no idea what that meant.”

Took a Semester Off

When he returned to school in January, after taking a semester off, he’d finally made his own decision, though he later spent several years figuring out what kind of doctor to be. Ultimately, he chose anesthesiology, because it enabled him to spend the most time with his own children.

“A lot of the pressures I felt growing up were put on me by myself. It took a long time to realize that, sure, you’re a Guyton, but people don’t always perceive you that way. They also can see you as yourself.”

Douglas wasn’t the only Guyton to tarry en route to an MD.

Catherine Guyton Greenberger, No. 5, an internist and the wife of a doctor, is 35 now. She still introduces herself as “the black sheep.”

“I didn’t go to medical school right away,” she explained. “I got my Ph.D. first.” Organic chemistry. Harvard.

“For Jeannie and me, it wasn’t so much a question of whether we’d be doctors. It was wondering whether to be a wife and mother or a doctor.”

Catherine, whom brother Douglas describes as “frighteningly brilliant,” decided to be all three: doctor, wife and mother of two. Jeannie, also an internist, got married last summer.

Fierce Individualism

Growing up in a family of 10 can foster fierce individualism.

It is June, 1985: Greg’s high school graduation day.

No. 10 son, salutatorian of his class, leaves home early to rehearse his commencement speech. Mother seizes the opportunity to tidy his room.

She notices a copy of his speech lying around, so she picks it up and starts reading. It strikes her as somewhat ordinary. Then she notices the note in the margin: “Start juggling”--juggling being the latest hobby Greg has picked up.

Ruth Guyton decides against mentioning this to her husband as they sit in the sweltering auditorium hours later waiting for their son’s speech.

It goes something like this: As individuals, a class cannot really do very much. (Greg sets a juggling pin on the floor.) In small groups, it can do a trifling performance. (He juggles two pins.) But coordinated, it can do a great performance. (The rest of the pins are added.) Occasionally, there are failures. (A pin drops.) But when you have failed, you pick yourselves up and start over. (The pin is retrieved.) And now, it is time for members of the class of ’85 to go their separate ways. (The pins are tossed into the audience.)

The crowd goes wild. Coins are thrown on stage. Arthur Guyton, having recovered from the shock of it all, beams with pride.

An Image Embedded

The image is firmly embedded in Ruth Guyton’s memory: “It was one of the greatest moments of my life.”

When Greg leaves home in September to begin his sophomore year at Vanderbilt, his mother will keep in touch with him the same way she has with the others: by letter.

She apologizes for sending her children carbon copies, but always makes it a point to add one or two personalized pages, and to rotate that last, faded copy so that nobody feels neglected.

Nobody does.

As the far-flung sons and daughters of Guyton rear their own children, in Baltimore, Atlanta, Houston, Seattle, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Florida, the lessons of a Mississippi childhood are passed on to a new generation.

Douglas says he’ll build his kids a big workshop with lots of tools.

Encouragement for Children

Robert will encourage his children to learn on their own, recalling the days when his father gave him a dollar for each book he read.

John will teach his kids “how to think.” Already, he finds himself teasing them, prodding them, tickling their minds as his father tickled his.

None of them expect the grandchildren of Guyton to become doctors--least of all their granddaddy, who points out that the life of a research and teaching physician differs greatly from that of a practicing doctor.

“The type of medicine I’m in looks like a nice life,” Arthur Guyton explained. “If I’d been on call all the time, working all hours, I doubt very much that my children would have chosen medicine.”

His children agree. “My father had lots of the advantages of medicine and few disadvantages,” said Robert, a cardiac surgeon. “My children, I think, would be much more hesitant--they’ve seen the hours I keep.”

And yet. . . .

Douglas admits he finds it hard to dispel the notion that heredity is destiny. “A lot of us believe it to a great extent. That’s why it took me so long to find the woman I married.”

And John confesses that, watching his daughter at play, he couldn’t help but notice something that struck him as a bit unusual: “She did show an interest in science at an early age.”