How My Light Is Spent: the Memoirs of Dewitt Stetten
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HOW MY LIGHT IS SPENT The Memoirs of Dewitt Stetten, Jr. Spring 1983 ON HIS BLINDNESS When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He returning chide, "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait." Sonnet XVI John Milton 1608-1674 P R E F A C E Apologia These are the recollections of a blind man. Not that I was always blind. I have worn spectacles since four years of age to correct a severe familial myopia. The correction was good and the myopia had the advantage of giving me microscopic vision when I took my glasses off and held an object about two inches from my face. Undoubtedly, my chronic dependence upon having spectacles contributed to my distaste for games such as baseball and tennis and to my insecurity in such activities as swimming. It was in the late 1960s, while residing in New Brunswick, New Jersey, that I first noted the visual anomaly that led fairly promptly to the diagnosis of macular degeneration. I have since been seen by a number of ophthalmologists who have accepted this as the principal diagnosis with various supplemental diagnoses including bilateral cataracts and possible "soft glaucoma." The latter diagnosis, which implies a transient and occasional increase in intraocular pressure, might explain the fact that, in addition to the loss of central vision, I also exhibit very considerable reduction in peripheral vision. About 1978 I found that I could no longer read, which was upsetting since reading had been a very important part of my life. I therefore asked to be relieved of my onerous duties as Deputy Director for Science, NIH, and about a year later I became Senior Scientific Advisor and moved to my present office at Stone House. Since then I have filled my life with tapes, records, conversa- tion, seminars, and frustration. It was during this period that my oldest daughter, Gail, suggested to me that I write down some of my adventures and experiences. It was, of course, a figure of speech. Blind men cannot readily write. However, I could still dictate, a craft which I had practiced for many years. I therefore undertook the job and soon found myself engrossed. It was only later that I recognized that what I was doing was fulfilling the therapeutic regimen prescribed by the late Adolph Meyer. This renowned psychia- trist, long director of the Phipps Clinic of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, often instructed his patients to set down their life histories on paper. This proved to be useful psychotherapy. And so, indeed, it has been in my case. After completing the first chapter I sent it off to Perspectives in Biology and I Medicine, a journal with which I have been associated since its founding, and was gratified to see it accepted for publication. I consulted with the editor, Richard Landau, about the possibility of publishing other chapters, and it was on his advice that I subsequently sought to have the assembled volume published. When I had finished the first draft of this book, I noted that there was very little in it about my immediate family. In one of Mark Twain's novels he notes in the preface that there is no weather in the text. He therefore pro- vides a wide choice of weathers in the preface and invites the reader to insert them at appropriate places. In analogous fashion I shall introduce here the several members of my family. Gail was our first-born, raised in Bethesda and Woods Hole, educated at Douglass College of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, with a Ph.D. in yeast genetics from the Department of Biology of Brown University, and a postdoctoral experience in human cytogenetics at the Children's Hospital of Harvard Medical School. She is married to Peter Maloney, whom she met while in graduate school. He is a physiologist with particular interest in mechanisms of transport across cell membranes. He received an opportunity to join the Department of Physiology at the Johns Hopkins Medical School and, subsequently, Gail found work there as director of the cytogenetics diagnostic laboratory of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Here she is responsible for the workup of amniotic fluids secured from women in early pregnancy, whose babies are at risk for Down's syndrome or other genetic defects. She is the mother of two delightful children --Beth, born in 1973, and Alex, born in 1976. Since they live within one hour's drive of our house, we see them quite frequently and our relations with our grandchildren are intimate and gratifying. Gail, who as a small child was always somewhat compulsive, has mellowed as a result of a prolonged illness from which, happily, she has now recovered, and has developed into a warm and sensitive young woman. My second daughter is Nancy, one and one-half years younger than Gail. She was always our political radical. She selected the University of Chicago, where she spent about 10 years completing both baccalaureate and Ph.D. degrees. Her field of specialty was political science--and more specifically, Russian studies. Nancy learns languages with relative ease and has mastered Russian both as a written and a spoken language. While a graduate student she met and married Frank Einstein, who was earning his Ph.D. in English II Literature. After failing to find suitable teaching opportunities in Chicago, Frank and Nancy moved to West Virginia where he found a position at Davis and Elkins, a small church-related college. Their first baby, Joseph, born in 1977, has a round face and bright red hair resembling my own in infancy. A few years ago Nancy and her family pulled up roots to accept positions at Fisk College in Nashville, Tennessee. This is a black school with many problems. But then Nancy and Frank always liked problems. He is teaching English and she political science. Within the past few years their second child, Anna, arrived. My third daughter, Mary, entered the Oberlin Conservatory to study voice. She soon decided, however, that the concert stage was not for her so she trans- ferred to the academic program. Upon graduation from Oberlin she selected teaching of small children as her career area, and to prepare for this she secured a master's degree from the Bank Street College in New York. It was while teaching at an elementary school associated with the United Nations that she discovered that very small children could be introduced to science provided the right language and the right experiments were selected. This novel approach developed ultimately in her publishing a book, Let's Play Science, which described many of the exercises that her kindergarten students enjoyed. The book was hand lettered and illustrated by Mary, who has a peculiar talent for drawing mice and rabbits. In this volume the experiments were performed by mice and rabbits, not upon them. Since that time, Mary and I have collaborated on a couple of thin volumes in which I have composed doggerel which she has supplemented with illustrations. So far these books have not been published. Mary has taught science to first- through sixth-grade students at the Walden School in New York City and is married to Michael Carson. Mike is a theatrical producer specializing in industrial shows, which are generally one-night stands in exotic resort areas where the staff of one or another affluent company gathers to be recharged. He has, of course, aspirations to produce serious drama on or off Broadway and will doubtless get there someday. In 1982 this marriage was blessed by the birth of Matthew, a delightful baby with a- particu- larly ready grin. George is our youngest. At a very early age he exhibited interest in both science and music and we started him with piano lessons when he was very young. While resisting parental pressure to practice, he always had great facility in playing by ear and in improvising. Furthermore, he has had a III talent in hitting the "objective" examinations which have now captured the field of education. Although he did not impress his teachers at Rutgers Preparatory School from which he graduated, he was accepted at Harvard College where he spent four years making friends, amateur music, and adequate though not brilliant grades. He graduated in the field of applied physics, which is Harvard's equivalent to engineering, and then surprised us by enrolling in the New England Conservatory which offered a two-year course in "third-stream music," a discipline which seems to concentrate on improvisation in the jazz mode. After one year of this he tried his hand at a number of other things, including being admitted to medical school and not going. He now lives in Woods Hole where he holds a position at the Oceanographic Institution and participates in the design and construction of electronic gear to be used in the deep-sea submersible vessel, the ALVIN. He also plays the piano at the Fishmonger Cafe, a popular local restaurant, and spends some time working on his science fiction novel.