Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

by Jason Karlawish

  What most fascinated Beaumont was the clear fluid he came to call the “gastric liquor.” Beaumont had observed that if the hole was not properly dressed, the stomach, when it was entirely empty and contracted upon itself, would extrude itself out through the aperture like a hen's egg. When he touched this tissue with the tip of his finger, it grew tumescent papilla and emitted a clear liquid that felt like water. Its taste was astringent. He tried positioning a cup to gather the liquid, but the process was slow, the yield trivial, and Alexis soon grew irritated and insisted on shifting his position.

  In time, an idea came to him like a thunderclap. One afternoon at the company store, he had seen Theodore Mathews's daughter use a gum elastic tube to suck up a glass of honeyed tea until she drained the glass, her lips pursed and cheeks sunken.

  The length of tube cost three cents.

  He tried it out the next morning, when Alexis's stomach was entirely empty. He positioned Alexis on his right side so that the stomach gently collapsed inward into its natural state, and then he inserted the thin length of gum elastic tube some five inches into the cavity. Alexis winced as the tube brushed against the tender margin of the hole.

  “Now roll onto your left side,” Beaumont commanded.

  Alexis hesitated.

  “Left,” Beaumont repeated.

  “Gauche,” Alexis muttered, and he turned as Beaumont, his hands gripping his patient's thin waist, positioned the orifice in a dependent location. The end of the tube stuck out like a queer straw.

  In just a few seconds, the clear liquor began flowing from the end of the tube. At first single drops, but in time it was a steady dribble. Beaumont collected these drops into a glass vial he held beneath the end of the tube. Alexis moaned.

  “Doctor, I'm sick.”

  “Tell me.” Beaumont's gaze was intent on the vial.

  His voice was a measured calm. Aequanimitas, he thought. He continued to move the tube. More drops flowed.

  “There.” Alexis whimpered as he breathed heavily. “In the pit. What's wrong with me?”

  Beaumont continued moving the tube.

  “It's dark now, Doctor.”

  The drops of clear liquor continued to flow. Beaumont held the tube steady.

  “Doctor, please.” Alexis begged.

  “You feel faint?” Beaumont asked steadily.

  Alexis swallowed hard. “Like I'm drunk. But I have not drunk in days. What's wrong?”

  “I know, Alexis. You'll be fine. Just rest.”

  He stroked the lad's side as he collected a few more drops, and then he slipped the tube out. He lay it carefully upon the tabletop and took up the cork, sealed the vial firmly and held it upward, thumb on the bottom and forefinger on the top, so that the light flowing in through the small window illuminated the vial. There was perhaps one ounce. He gently agitated the contents. It was beautiful, entirely clear, without a trace of sediment, little if any viscosity.

  Alexis was staring at it as well. “What is that?” he whispered.

  “Gastric liquor,” Beaumont pronounced. “Pure gastric liquor.”

  “Liquor? But I have not drunk.”

  “I know. It's in there. You made it, so to speak.”

  “Did you drain it all?”

  “No. Not all.”

  Alexis exhaled slowly.

  “And it hurt so, like I was to vomit. Next time just take it all out.”

  Beaumont slipped the vial into the small pocket of his vest. “We'll see. Now let's get this wound dressed and get you some breakfast.”

  Brief though the experiment was, the result was incontrovertible, and he was ecstatic. He could gather the liquor, study it and, ultimately, discover what this clear fluid was.

  BY APRIL, the daytime temperature rose above freezing sufficient to melt the snow. The pathways among the barracks, hospital, houses and company buildings soon became a slurry of liver-colored mud. In the evening the pathways would freeze so that come morning, lines of soldiers set forth like blue ants to spread sand and sawdust. They laid out boards, and these narrow paths afforded easy travel to and from the barracks, village and company buildings. Men began to laugh again, and Edgar was heard singing.

  One weekend the ice vanished from the straits, almost as abruptly as it had formed some six months before. The winter storms and the retreat of the ice swept away the debris the previous occupants had left upon the beach. A crew set out with fresh-cut logs to repair the corduroy road that led up from the harbor to Market Street and then on to the fort. Overnight, the land turned green, the air smelled of soil and the buds of the rhododendron swelled as thick as a great toe. Mackinac was ready for another season of commerce.

  Before the month was over, the first of the resupply ships arrived from Detroit. Beaumont watched from a bench near the dockyard as the soldiers and company men celebrated the new bull to replace the one they had slaughtered last fall. There were cages of chickens, seven squealing piglets, sacks of flour and meal, crates of dry goods, barrels of wines and rattling crates of brandies and Madeira, and to the delight of several of the men and boys, wheels of cheese. Mathews chuckled at the inventory of the winter's consumption of some thirty gallons Tenerifte wine, four and a half gallons port wine, ten gallons best Madeira, seventy gallons red wine and nine gallons brandy.

  Within days, the voyageurs' and Indians' boats appeared on the horizon. Some afternoons when Beaumont and Major Thompson leaned upon the parapet of Fort Hill to witness the traffic upon the waters, they counted at least fifty bateaux and canoes laden with pelts and buffalo robes. The beach was once again a crowded field of wigwams, wickiups and tents. The barking of dogs, the shouts and screams of little brown children and the chatter of men and women at their cooking fires created a constant din. In the evenings, the fires were like a reflection of the night sky, their clusterings denoting the alliances of their creators in this cosmopolis of trade. Ramsay Crooks was pleased with the value of this season's haul.

  “It must have been a brutal cold on the plain, brutal cold,” he announced as he inspected the thick nap of a buffalo robe some seven feet long. “And have you seen the ermine pelts, have you ever seen such a virginal white? And so soft. Brings tears to my eyes.”

  He rubbed a pelt against his cheek.

  Under the dispassionate regard of Captain Pearce and Major Thompson, Theodore Mathews, armed with clipboard and carbon pencil, directed the company clerks as they hauled from the warehouses crates full of trinkets and goods for trade. These they set out on tables fashioned from boards set across crates and barrels.

  Mathews, with his habit for order, arranged the trade goods alphabetically. There were rolls of blankets, broad cord, gray cloth, boxes and crates full of boxwood combs, biscuit, brass jewsharps, beaver shot, common needles and darning needles, cotton bandanna handkerchiefs, ivory combs, ingrain worsted thread, ink powder, japanned quart jacks, kettle chains, maitre de rels, men's shirts, men's imitation beaver hats, moon paper, nun's thread, nails, northwest guns, plain bath rings, pierced brooches, scalping knives, St. Lawrence shells, stone rings, sturgeon twine, stitching thread, snuff, snuff boxes, snaffle bridles, stirrup irons, tomahawks and tobacco. And most cherished, and thus guarded by a pair of soldiers, small barrels of whiskey. Within days the boxes and crates of goods were replaced four times, the warehouses filled with furs. The company store was crowded from dawn to dusk.

  Week after week, spring into summer, they would carry on like this. Theodore Mathews delivered the day's neatly printed receipts to the office, where Ramsay Crooks and his eldest son worked diligently and quietly over their accounts. The company men and the soldiers paced the parapets of Fort Hill, smoked and swapped stories as they waited for the next wave of traders to arrive. The Reverend James and his wife taught scripture to one dozen Indian children at the mission school.

  “What do they do with the carcasses?” Beaumont asked Major Thompson one afternoon as they gazed down upon the bedlam of trade from the heights of the fort.

 
“They?”

  “The trappers. What do they do with the carcasses of the buffalo and such? Eat them?”

  The major shrugged. “Perhaps some. Or leave them where they skinned them.”

  “There must be piles of bones out there.”

  The major nodded. “Perhaps the next great industry,” he observed.

  “And then what?”

  ELEVEN

  IN JUNE, ONE YEAR AFTER THE SHOOTING, a corporal delivered a note to Beaumont. It was the bill for last month's expenses for Alexis's room and board. As Beaumont read it, his temples pounded. The borough had returned this bill to the army without remittance, and over it Captain Pearce had scrawled in a jagged script:

  William,

  Gone by July.

  Capt Isaiah Ignatius Pearce

  He wadded up the note and tossed it to the floor. He slapped his desktop.

  “Alexis is my patient, mine, not theirs. They think they have me cornered,” he murmured. “I'll fight them with charity.”

  Two days later, on a clear Saturday afternoon, the Beaumont family sat in their sitting room. Sarah was absorbed with a doll. Deborah had paused her reading of a favorite passage from Pamela to gaze at Sarah and then at a window pot of geraniums that had just bloomed. She was smiling. Beaumont was at the table with his leather notebook opened before him. He had finished tabulating the balance of their household accounts and savings. This winter's fees were numerous. Their accounts were, finally, truly whole. In the past two years he had earned some $250 from the office of Indian Affairs vaccinating the Indians against the pox. The results inspired confidence. He set down his carbon pencil and asked if he might talk with Deborah about Alexis.

  She closed the book over her thumb to mark her place. “Of course.”

  “I'd like to move him here to stay in the back room.”

  She set her book down beside her. “So the town has not rescinded its decision?”

  “Of course not. Money overflows the place, but not one cent for charity.”

  “Well then, why can't he leave?”

  “Deborah please, let me explain.”

  “Go ahead,” she said plainly.

  “Perhaps he's well enough to travel. But you've seen for yourself that he still needs my care. He can't leave with that wound as it is because it's not yet healed. There is still a passage directly into his stomach, and as long as it is open, whatever he eats or drinks simply passes out like a stoved-in tap at the bottom of a barrel. Unless of course it's dressed, and then all's well. The stomach works as well as any man's. You see how he has gained his strength, and he walks about now, but as long as that wound remains open he has a direct passage from his stomach to open air.”

  Beaumont stopped speaking. “Do you gather what I mean? Are you listening to me? Deborah?”

  She sat mutely with her hands folded upon her lap. She was looking at Sarah.

  “Deborah, look at me please? Could you grant your husband that simple courtesy?”

  She raised her eyes.

  “Don't you see, Deborah, that to send him off now while he's healthy but still wounded is like throwing a pearl into the lake? He will heal.”

  “What do you mean a pearl, William?”

  “He's a singular case. Singular. True, my library's limited, but I cannot find a case like his.”

  He was pacing. Sarah squatted upon her chubby thighs, her tiny heels tucked into her swaddled crotch, her doll idle in her lap. She looked up wide-eyed at her father as he passed back and forth, back and forth before her.

  “I can't just let him leave. And if he does and he ends up in another physician's care, most surely I'll hear that physician's laughter clear across Lake Huron at the folly of the man who sent this prize off in a bateau because the citizens of the town could not muster a few dollars a month to keep him fed, housed and bandaged.”

  “Prize? William, what do you mean? He's your patient.”

  “Of course he is. Don't you see, Deborah, that the case is not yet done? There's an opportunity here that I simply cannot ignore. When he heals, I will write it up. I've taken careful notes since the day of the shooting. It just needs to be completed, and once it is complete, I shall send it to the Medical Recorder. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I have every reason to expect the recognition for my efforts will be substantial. I have every expectation that Surgeon General Lovell will see this as reason for my promotion to surgeon.

  “Deborah, listen to me, please. When he lies on his side, I can look directly into the cavity and see the process of digestion. I've seen things no other physician has. Seen beef digested. I've seen wonderful things. And I saved his life. Don't you see? If he leaves now, what sort of ending is that to the case report? That we cast him off in a boat to travel some one thousand miles and fend for himself? A case worthy of the Medical Recorder cannot conclude like that.”

  She gazed down at her novel. “I don't read such reports.”

  “But you know what a good story is. That you do. This cannot end like some tragedy of Shakespeare. It requires a good ending.”

  “When, how, will it end?”

  “I beg you, Deborah, just to give me time. I need time for him to heal. He needs to heal, and when he is healed, the case is done and my paper is done.”

  “He stays in the back room then? Will he eat with us?”

  Beaumont considered her question. “We can't expect him to pay his way when he has nothing. Besides, he'll work for us. It will help build his character.”

  Deborah shook her head. “I meant, will we share table with him? He's a nice enough young man, but he's a bit queer.”

  She stopped speaking. But he said nothing.

  “William, don't you see? I'm not in the army. I live here on an island with just eight women I can talk with. I have to suffer Emilie Crooks for the use of her piano, no letters for the months of winter. We shall have another child in the winter. And now you propose to bring an invalid voyageur into our house.”

  She held a handkerchief at her mouth.

  “Deborah, I know life here is difficult. I know that. It is for me as well. And that's precisely why we need to help Alexis. My career has always been only halfway to what I want, to what I deserve. When I first enlisted in the army, during the war, it was to be as a surgeon or even an assistant surgeon. But they made me a mere surgeon's mate. When the fighting ended, I deserved promotion to assistant surgeon, and yet, despite all my labors and successes, they would only offer me my same commission as a mate. At York, I operated side by side with the surgeons, just as one of them. When other doctors fled the army, I remained, even in the winter, along the Niagara frontier. When Plattsburgh was under siege and half the town fled and begged that we sue the British for peace, I joined in the fighting. I dodged bullets at Fort Moreau to tend to the wounded. I've a letter signed by General Macomb and seventeen other officers that testifies of my bravery in that battle. But eight years later, after hard work in private practice, when I sought to reenlist, they would not grant me commission as a surgeon, but only as an assistant surgeon. And do you know why I have suffered these repeated indignities upon my talent and my character?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No,” she whispered.

  “Because I, a New England farmer's son who set out in this world with little more than my wits and my ambition, I was trained not in a medical college, but as an apprentice bound by an indenture, much like these voyageurs who gather beaver pelts for Ramsay Crooks. That has vexed my career since the day the Third Medical Society of Vermont granted me a license. That training has been my blessing, and it has been my curse. But here, with this case, I finally have something to show, and show definitively, my talents as a surgeon and a physician.

  “I saved his life. I nurtured him to health. And now, if I can close the wound, I will have managed entirely on my own an unprecedented case. When Dr. Lovell reads this account of the wound he will surely see the rightness of my promotion, and when colleagues read the case, they will sur
ely grant me the recognition due to me. Now and forever. The circumstances of my training will be of no consideration in the judgment of my character and the merit of my skill. This is America, not some aristocracy. A man is judged for what he has achieved, not from whence he came.”

  He stopped speaking abruptly. A sob welled within his chest.