Good Old Guyton

Paying Hommage to Arthur Guyton

by Dr Dan Waniek, MD
Copyright © 2006 danwaniek.org

Arthur C. Guyton, Textbook of Medical Physiology, Saunders (Elsevier, September 1, 2005).
	In a world where everything which once was complete now implodes, and all equisite but finite knowledge either is already extinct or simply explodes, Arthur C. Guyton is the last man who knew everything in the field of physiology. Well, the mechanical slaves of Virgil Gheorghiu, did it. Apocalypse comes in peculiar ways, one for each of us... And the same for all - insignificance. For loss of sense in our actions is what destroys everything, with a helping hand from each of us... Of course, more detailed stuff may be up-to-date. But then again, for how long is it still true, in this world of web-based " data-driven " nonsense ? Why is such a one-man-show unavoidable? It's because completeness brings character, and without it, all knowledge is doomed. We may be relevant in a nanofield of knowledge and yet we miss the whole point altogether.
For there may be hope only when you contemplate the whole story. Knowledge may be about data and power, but if it does not build our soul as well ( and not the soil in which knowledge grows ) it's all hopelessly lost ! From the very first pages where you count cells with Arthur Guyton, you understand it's genii who worked there with his inspired writing. Contemporary textbooks like the one hastily published by Springer, are a shame in comparison. If you want a taste of the whole thing, read Guyton ! You'll see why Nobel prizes still go to medicine " and physiology ". ISBN : 0721602401, BOBE-5228-REFS-0001, RANK : #4,359, 1104 pages, 11th edition.