Dr. William Beaumont

Doctor William Beaumont By C. J. Armstrong, M.D. Professor of Plastic surgery University of Louisville School of Medicine 1929 Some of the brightest lights of American medicine and surgery have been backwoodsmen. Ephraim McDowell, who did his wonderful operation of ovariotomy, was a backwoods practitioner. Marion Sims, who did so much to establish the science of surgery on this continent, and came to be the leading surgeon of his day, was doing his epoch making work “far form the maddening crowd.” So too, William Beaumont, another backwoodsman, was the pioneer physiologist of this country and the first to make a contribution of enduring value. William Hunter, the brilliant physician of the eighteenth century, brother of the immortal John Hunter, when lecturing to some students one day make this oft quoted remark, “Some physiologists will have it that the stomach is a mill, others, that its it a fermenting vat, others again, that it is a stew pan; but in my view of the matter, it is neither a mill, a fermenting vat nor a stew pan; but a stomach, gentlemen, a stomach.” It is the purpose of this sketch to discuss in brief fashion, the life an labors of the pioneer American physiologist, William Beaumont, whose work proved conclusively that the stomach is “neither a mill, a fermenting vat nor a stew-pan; but a stomach, gentlemen, a stomach.” William Beaumont, the third child of Samuel, was born November 21, 1785 in Lebanon, Connecticut, a few years after the close of the Revolutionary War. His father was a frugal, thrifty New England farmer who ploughed his land with wooden plow drawn by oxen, sowed his grain by hand, cut it with a scythe and threshed out the grain with a flail. His clothes were homespun and almost proof against wear, tear and time. The township in which they lived boasted of a population of four thousand, mostly farmers. The farms were small, rocky and not very productive. His parents were staunch Democrats and patriots of the old Jeffersonian school, members of the Congregationalist church but apparently there is n record of their son William having joined the church. However, he must have been a regular attendant as in latter life, he explained his non-attendance by stating that as a boy, he had made up for a lifetime. These New Englanders had strong religious and political views, and in this straitlaced puritanical atmosphere, young Beaumont was brought up and educated in the Lebanon school under a teacher named Tisdale, who had made the school famous in New England. We know nothing of his rank at school; in fact, very little record is preserved of his early life. It seems strange that he would preserve in writing all events of his adult life and not record a single incident of his boyhood. In 1806 young William Beaumont, then 21 years of age, not finding farming to his liking, became restless and desired to see more of the world. He left his fathers roof and went forth to seek his fortune. Setting out with a hoarse and cutter, barrel of cider and one hundred dollars in cash, he started northward, in mid-winter, without any particular destination and finally arrived the following spring at the little village of Champlain, New York, near the finally arrived the following spring at the little village of Champlain, New York, near the Canadian border. Being well educated he was entrusted with the village school, which he conducted successfully for three years. It was during this period of teaching that he decided to study medicine, and spent his leisure moments reading such medical works as he could secure. Teaching then was only a means to an end, the real object being to put sufficient funds to tide him over his two years apprenticeship. There being no physician in Champlain whom he considered worthy of being his preceptor, he crossed Lake Champlain in 1810 to St. Albans, Vermont, where Dr. Benjamin Chandler was the most prominent physician and surgeon. He made application to Dr. Chandler and was admitted into his home as an apprentice and student of medicine. Here he was thoroughly drilled in the duties and routine of a country practice. He spent two years there in diligent study—never wasting time, reading the best books on surgery and medicine, dissecting when the opportunity afforded, seizing every opportunity to do a postmortem, assisting in operations, making careful notes, preserving his case records and learning from the experience of his master. His notebook has been preserved, and two outstanding features are the excellent and minute case records of all patients he saw and his great interest in autopsies, which he was always eager to secure and which were always performed with exceeding care and attention to every detail. His notes demonstrate c9ndlusively that the power of keen observation and true scientific spirit was obvious at an early age of his career. When he had finished his apprenticeship the Medical Society of Vermont granted him a license to practice on the second Tuesday of June A.S. 1812. This same month war was declared against England and in September 1812, Beaumont joined the American Army as surgeon’s mate. His career in the army during the war of 1812 is graphically described in his diary, which has been preserved. He saw a most active and strenuous service but found time to write down many interesting medical observations and to try out original forms of treatment. Read from Diary page 44- Life and Letters, by Meyer. He suspended duty in the army for a time in 1813 and began the practice of medicine in Plattsburg, but soon returned to the army. In 1815, after peace had been concluded, he resigned from the army and again entered practice at Plattsburgh, associated with Dr. G. Senter, another army surgeon. They also opened a store containing a “general assortment of drugs, medicine, groceries, dye woods, etc., which they calculated to sell on liberal terms for cash or approved credit.” In 1820 he again joined the army and was commissioned Post Surgeon of the army by President Monroe on March 18. He was immediately ordered to Fort Mackinaw, on the northwestern frontier. It was while on duty at this post that the accident, which happened to Alexis St. Martin, gave Beaumont his chance, otherwise, he perhaps would never have been known to posterity. Frequently, however, by mere chance or an accident when it comes to a man with an alert, well-trained mind, gifted with imagination, may become a great opportunity. The discovery of the X-Ray was, in a sense, quite accidental, but the well- trained mind of roentgen immediately grasped its importance and possibilities for study and development. Many of Pasteur’s great discoveries were accidental in a sense, but back of them all were years of hard study and work, preparing a mind to grasp the importance and see the implication of chance observations. On a day in June 1822, on the island of Michili, Macinac, in the far off northern wilds, where the waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron unite, the annual return tide of the trading post was in full swing, and a noisy and excited crowd of Indiana, French-Canadians Voyageurs and soldiers were gathered about the palisades and block houses of the old fort. Fort Macinac was a station of the American Fur Company and the voyageurs were returning with the pelts of the winters catch. Suddenly, from the company’s store, there was a loud report of a shotgun – and a young voyageur dropped to the floor. There was tremendous excitement; wild rumors of a shooting scrape and messengers were hurrying to the fort in search of a doctor. Ina few minutes an alert straight young man in the uniform of a United States Army Surgeon, made his way through the crowd and was at the side of a young French-Canadian, who had been wounded by the accidental discharge of a gun. Thus we have Beaumont in contact for the first time with that “old fistulous Alexis,” by whose means he was to make his famed investigations. One of the officers of the fur company, a Mr. Hubbard, gave the following account of the accident. On the morning of June 6, a young French-Canadian Alexis St. Martin, was standing in front of the company’s store, where one of the party was holding a shotgun, which was accidentally discharged, the whole charge entering St. Martin’s body. The muzzle was not over three feet from him, I think not more than two. The wadding entered his body, as well as pieces of his clothing; his shirt took fire; he fell, as we supposed, dead. Dr. Beaumont, the surgeon of the fort, was immediately sent for and reached the wounded man in a very short time, probably three minutes. We had just gotten him on a cot and were taking off some of his clothing. After the doctor had extracted part of the shot, together with pieces of clothing, and dressed his wound carefully he lift him, remarking: “The man cannot live thirty-six hours; I will come and see him by and by.” In two or three hours he visited him again, expressing surprise at finding him doing better than he had anticipated. The next day, after getting out more shot and clothing, and cutting off the ragged edges of the wound, he informed M. Stewart, in my presence, that he thought he would recover.” This prediction, as we know, proved true.

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