BEAUMONT
BEAUMONT
finally located St. Martin in lower
Canada, two thousand miles from Fort
Crawford. He had married, was the
father of two children and had supported
himself by service as a voyageur. At
great expense he secured his return and
continued the experiments on him from
August, 1829 to 1831, when he was al-
lowed to take his family and return home.
St. Martin's condition may be inferred
when it is considered that this journey
was made in an open canoe and traversed
the Mississippi to the mouth of the
Ohio, up the Ohio, across the (now) state
of Ohio, down Lakes Erie and Ontario
and the River St. Lawrence, the trip
taking six weeks. In August, 1832,
Beaumont was granted leave of absence
and met St. Martin at Plattsburg, New
York. From November, 1832, to March,
1834, they were in Washington conduct-
ing experiments. In the fall of 1833 was
issued the first edition of "Experiments
and Observations of the Gastric Juice and
the Physiology of Digestion," by William
Beaumont, M. D., surgeon of the United
States Army, Plattsburg, New York.
Printed by F. P. Allen, 1833. In all
there were about two hundred and forty
experiments, besides the microscopic ex-
aminations and observations. Early in
1834 he was ordered to Jefferson Bar-
racks, a military post now fourteen miles
below St. Louis, Missouri. Scarcely had
he started for this new post when Lewis
Cass, the secretary of war, received
through Edward Everett, a petition sign-
ed by two hundred members of Congress,
asking that Beaumont and St. Martin be
sent to Boston, for study by Dr. Charles
Jackson. The secretary of war replied
that under existing arrangements it was
impossible for Dr. Beaumont to visit
Boston. Mr. Everett now sought to
have Congress appropriate $10,000 to
send Beaumont and St. Martin to Europe
for study by the best physiologists and
chemists of human gastric digestion.
The appropriation failed. On July 1
Dr. Beaumont reached Jefferson Bar-
racks, but one month later he was sent
to Fort Crawford. In 1835 he was made
purveyor of medical supplies for the west-
ern district and surgeon to the St. Louis
Arsenal. The light duties of these posi-
tions permitted him to engage in private
practice in which he promptly took a
conspicuous position. In 1S39 he was
ordered to proceed at once to Florida for
duty. This order being maintained in
spite of his protests, he resigned and con-
tinued practice in St. Louis. During the
cholera epidemic of 1849, though sixty-
four years old, Dr. Beaumont labored
day and night in caring for the sick. In
1844, in conjunction with Dr. S. W. Are-
don, he was sued for §10,000 damages by
a Mrs. Mary Dugan. The claim was
that the doctors had treated an inguinal
hernia as an appendicitis; verdict for the
defendants, though the pamphlet war
lasted many months with great virulence.
Of Beaumont's apt perception of stran-
gers, Dr. Reyburn says:
"You might introduce him to twenty strangers daily, and he would give an accurate estimate of each; his peculiar traits, disposition, etc., and not a few would receive some fitting sobriquet. Before his time there were recorded many cases of permanent fistula of the human stomach, but Beaumont was the first to embrace the opportunity to study the gastric juice. His daughter, Mrs. Keim, says he once cured a hypochondriacal army officer by horsewhipping him. A wealthy, domineering man, the despair of many doctors, sought Beaumont's aid. He hesitated, but finally yielded to im- portunity on condition that what he pre- scribed would be done. His prescription was a large supply of bread pills and a trip to the Pacific coast — a cure resulted. Among his warm friends was Gen. Robert E. Lee, who from the age of sixteen was quite deaf, due to standing nearer a fourth-of- July cannon than any other boy of his set, on challenge. Not the least of his trials with St. Martin was the settling of his fights with the teasing crowds, who called him "the man with a lid on his stomach" and otherwise sought his annoyance. The practice was not checked till many blows and not a little
