ROBERT E.GOSSELIN

Irene Heinz GivenProfessor of Pharmacology

Like many men of achievement. Dr. Robert E. Gosselin, the Irene Heinz Given Professor of Pharmacology at the Dartmouth Medical School, doesn't know how to be idle. An international authority on poisons and how they affect the human body, he helped establish the Poison Control Center at the Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in 1957 and has been director ever since. The only one in northern New England, that center provides its critical life-saving service 24-hours-a-day, mostly as a phone consulting resource for physicians as they are confronted with poison emergencies.

In advancing his work, Gosselin followed his lively curiosity to become also a pioneer in the use of the computer as an aid in both research and teaching in the fields of pharmacology and toxicology. He is co-author of the widely used reference work, Clinical Toxicology of CommercialProducts. This monumental volume, assessing the toxicity of more than 15,000 commercial products and listing antidotes for them, is now in its third edition. Gosselin is presently revising the ingeniously cross-referenced work by means of a complex computer program with capabilities for editing, sorting, storing, and retrieval. That file, involving more than 300,000 computer "words," is one of the largest on line in Dartmouth's Kiewit Computation Center.

Gosselin has served as an expert witness advising Congressional committees and federal agencies on pollution hazards arising from the myriad of chemicals in modern home products - from detergents to deodorizers, from food preservatives to fuel. It was Gosselin who, in testimony before the Federal Trade Commission, warned of the dangers of the caustic ingredients put in many detergents recently to restore their effectiveness after the rush to remove pollution-generating phosphates.

His pursuit of knowledge about how drugs affect various functions of the body has led him to basic research on how the blood performs its critical two-fold function of carrying to tissue cells the nutrients they need to grow or regenerate and of removing wastes from the cells. "Much is known about the heart in its role as the pump for the blood flow," Gosselin says, "but we still know woefully little about how the blood actually performs its life-sustaining work, how it transports nutrients through capillary walls to the individual cells."

Another research project involves the study of how various drugs affect the workings of cilia, microscopic hairlike projections lining the inside of the nose, sinuses and lower respiratory tract which wave back and forth at an incredible rate of speed - up to 30 times a second. Cigarette smoking is now known to inhibit the action of cilia and to reduce their ability to trap foreign substances before they get to the lungs and to carry the trapped fluid out of the system. Some researchers are now trying to establish if there is any connection between the hobbling of the protective action of the cilia and the increased incidence of lung cancer among heavy cigarette smokers.

As the first chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, established at Dartmouth Medical School in 1957, Gosselin teaches a share of the classes preparing future physicians in this important field. And he is constantly utilizing the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System to fashion improved ways of teaching and learning in the two related areas.

He has devised several computer programs simulating how various drugs act on the human system, and these models enable students to attack theoretical problems in toxicology with enhanced understanding.

Another program - intricate in the subtleties of its construction - leads students through a random drill in the identification, classification and description of characteristics of more than 300 drugs.

That program, in which the computer seems literally to converse with a student using it, includes synonyms for generic drug names, as well as brand names and street slang, where commonplace. Thus, if a student remembers a brand or slang name correctly instead of the preferred generic term, the computer is "schooled" to give the student partial credit. It then goes on to inform the user of the correct generic term, complete with a concise description of it. It "volunteers" the same information for a wrong answer.

Behind that service is the notion that the drill is designed to speed learning, not simply to test it. The drill, which has even been programmed to recognize minor misspellings, was used last year by 63 per cent of the students in the pharmacology class who asked it 37,632 questions while using up 12,531 minutes of computer terminal time.

These endeavors and the many more not mentioned here might be considered enough to fill a couple of careers. But, with a zest for life as insatiable as his curiosity. Gosselin has taken advantage of his few "idle" hours away from teaching and research to become:

An ardent amateur scuba diver, although he's beginning to have second thoughts about that hobby after finding himself trapped last winter with a shark in a coral cave 65 feet under the surface of the Caribbean. The shark apparently was as scared as the doctor was and retreated through a fissure at the other end of the underwater cave;

An artist, whose portrait sketches have become prized possessions of fellow Norwich townsmen, who have found themselves "sitting" for him during town meetings or at the annual Norwich Fair;

An enthusiastic, if by his own standards bumbling, instrumentalist who somehow finds time to play trombone and baritone horn, as the occasion demands, with the Hanover-Norwich Community Band at all kinds of events, including summer concerts on the Dartmouth and Norwich Greens and many country fairs;

An amateur historian, whose imaginary account of "A Clinicopathologic Conference on Napoleon's Last Illness" makes as fascinating reading as any whodunit. Gosselin's conclusion from the medical evidence is that, as some historians have suggested, Napoleon was murdered - slowly poisoned by one of his aides while exiled on the desolate and distant island of Saint Helena; and,

A mycologist, who enjoys nothing more than roaming the nearby wood in search of edible mushrooms and later preparing them according to his own recipes.

A native of Springfield, Mass., Gosselin was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown in 1941. Four years later, he received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Rochester, in physiology, and his dissertation was based on work he did during those war years to learn the effects of prolonged dry heat on the troops in training for the North African invasion.

He went on after the war to earn an M.D. dearee from the University of Rochester School of Medicine in 1947. Fallowing an internship at the former grace-New . Haven Community Hospital associated with Yale, he returned to Rochester to be with his bride, as she completed her studies for an M.D. degree. During those years, Gosselin held two positions as a member of the faculty at the University School of Medicine: teaching pharmacology and as a research scientist with the Rochester Atomic Energy Project. It was while with AEC that he developed an interest in the toxicology of such radioactive materials as uranium and beryllium, melding his interests in human physiology, pharmacology and toxicology.

He joined the Dartmouth Medical School faculty in 1957, and since arriving on the Hanover scene, he and his wife have had parallel careers in medicine while sharing chores in bringing up their two children in their rambling brick farmhouse on the outskirts of Norwich.

In 1965, Gosselin was named the first incumbent of the Irene Heinz Given Professorship, one of two endowed at the Dartmouth Medical School with a $1 million gift from the Irene Heinz Given and John LaPorte Given Foundation.