class notesPostcardsAutumn colors in blazing profusion,snowflakes delicately alighting onwinding walkways, a staunch stone belltower standing guard—as one seasonfades to the next, none of the peacefulbeauty escapes Jimmy Ellis' attentionas he patrols the campus. “Working atSwarthmore is like being inside a postcardwhere you can take a piece for yourself,"he says. During 26 years as a publicsafety officer, Ellis—who developed aninterest in photography as a teenager—has chosen well as he gathers piecesof the postcard that is Swarthmore.40 : swarthmore college bulletin
profileForget 8 Glasses a DayYOU MAY DRINK LESS WATER, SAYS PHYSIOLOGIST HEINZ VALTIN ’49, WHO HAS IMPACTED RENAL SCIENCE WORLDWIDE.Heinz Valtin and his wife, Nancy Heffernan Valtin ‘51, enjoytheir house on Vermont farmland. For 25 years, Nancy taughtkindergarten in the Norwich school system.Acollective sigh of relief echoed around the globe in August2002—the mantra “drink at least eight glasses of water a day,”popularized by, among others, New York Times “Personal Health”columnist JE Brody, had been refuted. Those of us who had beenfeeling guilty for not making our daily quotas were able to return toour caffeine-laden coffees, teas, and sodas with joyful abandon andfeeling just a tad smug—thanks to Heinz Valtin ’49, internationallyrenowned expert on renal function and Andrew C. Vail ProfessorEmeritus and Constantine and Joyce Hampers Professor Emeritusof Physiology at Dartmouth Medical School.Valtin had read the Times article and questioned its scientificbasis. So, when an editor from the American Journal of Physiology(AJP) requested that he research the existence of scientific evidenceto support the mantra, he agreed.The resulting article, published in AJP as an “Invited Review”(August 2002), stated that, except for a few illnesses and special circumstances—forexample, vigorous exercise in hot climates—forceddrinking of water is unnecessary for healthy individuals with sedentarylifestyles in temperate climates.Invited to speak on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, hewas interviewed on four continents. “I drink five to six glasses orcups of liquid a day. Only one is plain water,” he says. “The rest arecoffee, tea, juice, milk, all of which are at least 90 percent water.”Valtin says: “If it had been any other topic, I’d have declinedJOHN SETARObecause I was retired by then, but this one was close to my heart.”His career has been devoted to the kidney and its functions. “Thekidney maintains not only the body’s water balance but also the balancefor sodium, potassium, calcium, chloride, phosphates, andnumerous other substances. It performs all these tasks in differentparts of the nephron, the functional unit of the kidney. What’s fascinatingis that it can do them all discretely and simultaneously.”In 1960, using rats from a litter bred by a colleague in West Brattleboro,Vt., Valtin developed a research model called the BrattleboroRat. “The animal had a small mutation of the gene that producesthe antidiuretic hormone, causing the rare disease diabetesinsipidus (entirely different from sugar diabetes except that theyboth involve large water turnover),” he says. “The model has hadamazing applicability in research and is still used today in manylaboratories around the world.”An officer of the International Union of Physiological Sciencesand chair of the International Renal Commission Valtin, and hiswife, Nancy Heffernan Valtin ’51, have traveled all over the world.With a particular interest in promoting science in Third Worldcountries, he was a co-initiator of a 1987 conference and workshopin Nairobi on teaching renal physiology in Africa, the first-ever conferencefocusing exclusively on the kidney to be held in Africa.Valtin is the author of many articles and five books includingRenal Function: Mechanisms Preserving Fluid and Solute Balance inHealth, which for many years was the most widely used textbook inrenal physiology and has been translated into German, Japanese,and Chinese. In the 1981 article “The Joy of Valtin,” Harvard MedicalSchool student Edward Perper wrote: “It is difficult to explainhow well Dr. Valtin is able to make the most complex of issues notonly comprehensible but, more important (especially to the mentallybesieged medical student), thoroughly exciting.”Recipient of awards for both his scholarship and his teaching,Valtin was and still is a beloved and inspiring teacher, whose highestpriority was always respect for his students as partners in learning.Moreover, he “made even the most difficult concepts of renal physiologyand acid-base regulation as clear as crystal,” says Eric BrennerDMS ’72-’73 in the spring 2006 DMS Alumni News and Notes.Retired since 1994, Valtin served as chair of the 3-day DMSBicentennial Symposium in 1997, which focused on ethical issuesarising out of advances in the biomedical sciences and featuredthree Nobel laureates and a speaker who later received the prize. Theprogram included a world première performance of a commissionedwork, The Staff of Aesculapius, by Charles Dodge.Valtin still attends seminars and maintains his medical licensethrough continuing education—all via video-streaming on his computer.“I can sit here at my desk, look out on a beautiful Vermontfarm, and be in touch with the world,” he says.—Carol Brévart-Demmdecember 2006: 47
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