Clever approaches to intriguing questions: halcyon days of carotid body research by one of the best

In 1993, I was in the first year of my doctoral training at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, exploring upper airway reflex control of breathing and airway patency. The 12th Congress of the International Society for Arterial Chemoreception (ISAC) was hosted in Dublin that year. Carotid body physiology was flourishing with intense debate of the diminutive enigmatic structure. In the mix was the quietly spoken, sharp-minded Gerald (Jerry) E. Bisgard. Earlier that year, the Wisconsin group had published in The Journal of Physiology (Smith et al., 1993) the latest observations in a fascinating series of studies. I was intrigued by the experimental model, the goat, and the use of a clever experimental approach, surgically isolating the carotid body, and independently controlling gas tensions perfusing the structure by means of an extracorporeal circuit, with denervation of the contralateral organ (Busch et al., 1985). This allowed for examination in awake animals of the ventilatory effects of stimuli isolated to the carotid body or the whole-animal (brain). Importantly, maximal activation of the aortic bodies in the goat produces no ventilatory effects (Weizhen et al., 1992). The goat, which I would later study as a post-doctoral fellow in Bisgard’s group, is an excellent model