Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

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Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont Page 15

by Jason Karlawish


  “I'm sure my Abigail is wondering about me,” Mathews stammered. “I should go, gentlemen. Good evening to you, Doctor, Mr. Crooks.”

  Theodore Mathews hurried off down the hill to the village.

  Crooks spoke. “He's a queer young man. I'd fire him if I had the right man to replace him.”

  Beaumont and Ramsay watched Matthews disappear into the darkness.

  “Ramsay, I've wanted to speak with you.”

  “I know,” Crooks said simply.

  “You know?”

  “Go on, William. Speak to me.”

  “The thaw will soon commence, and with it I worry that the authorities will renew their pressure for Alexis to depart. Despite his innocence, despite his wound, despite all my charity. My private charity.”

  Crooks humphed.

  “You seem, more so than the others, to recognize the folly in their ways. I've seen your smirks, your chuckles. Captain Pearce was irrational in his accusations that Alexis caused the stabbing or was some party to the event. And you as well know the value of an investment. I have invested too much in Alexis to simply cast him away in a boat to become a pauper or a freak in a circus show. I want to pay you for his indenture. It's forty dollars, is it not?”

  “That's about right. Alexis St. Martin owes the American Fur Company forty dollars cash. Never mind the interest owed on the credit for the goods. That's probably another five dollars. It's a complicated system. Works to our advantage, if you gather the meaning of my words.”

  “Why don't I just pay you?”

  Crooks stepped close enough to Beaumont that Beaumont could smell his sweet breath. The darkness seemed to lift. “Pay me the forty?”

  “You erase your debt, he's free of the company, and when Captain Pearce comes griping to me about his drinking, we can just tell the captain to mind his soldiers. Pearce listens to you.”

  Crooks hesitated.

  “I want peace among us all over this lad. Should I depart the island, given the company's reach and power, I could call on you if I should need help with Alexis.”

  Crooks mused over the proposition. The edges of his mouth were turned down, his lower lip puckered out. “You're a clever man, Doctor, a clever man. I do admire your devotion. What about thirty?”

  “Ramsay?”

  Crooks chuckled. “In silver.”

  “I've only paper notes, but I could get silver.”

  “Never the mind. Irony has never been your strength. Earnest, yes, all you Americans are that way, earnestness and pluck, but irony, no. Paper's fine, William. Just fine.” Crooks shrugged his great shoulders. “Thirty, forty, what's ten dollars? Well, a lot to be sure. A lot. But the symbolism of the price overcame me for a moment.”

  Beaumont felt the grip of Crooks's right hand round his own. They shook.

  “It's that wound, isn't it, William? The hole into the stomach. You've finally come to see its value. Or maybe you saw it that very first day, when you came back to the store to fetch him? You don't have to answer. I'm proud of you, William. Your earnestness and your pluck.”

  Crooks chuckled. He looked up at the sky, then looked back at Beaumont. “Your stellar aspirations. You can pay me when you have the money, and you can rest well assured. The company will watch over you and your digesting machine. He trusts you, you know. You're like his father, his savior.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE DAY AFTER BEAUMONT PAID RAMSAY CROOKS the debt Alexis owed on his indenture, Elias sent for Alexis to meet him at the hospital. The three men stood in the space where Alexis had lived for a year and chatted about the many months of his slow recovery. Alexis lifted his shirt to show Elias his wound.

  “You see,” he smiled. “Healed up.”

  Elias leaned down, his hands upon his knees, to better inspect the scarred tissue and muscles, at the center of which was the hole sealed by the lid of pink flesh. He brushed the tip of his right index finger gently over the hole.

  “If I'm not a Dutchman.” He looked at Beaumont. “I'd never a thought.”

  Beaumont stood with his arms crossed upon his chest.

  “It works handily to seal the cavity but yields readily to gentle digital pressure,” he explained.

  Elias whistled.

  Alexis was still smiling. “Soon I will return to trapping.”

  “You can lower your shirt, Alexis,” Beaumont said.

  Alexis did as ordered.

  The three men stood awkwardly like men at a dance without partners. Beaumont broke the silence. He reached and placed an arm over Alexis's shoulders.

  “Alexis, why don't you step into my office for a minute? I thought it important we talk.”

  The two met sat across from each other at Beaumont's cluttered desk. Alexis kept to the edge of his chair; his hands gripped the seat as though he feared falling off. His black eyes surveyed the contents of the desk, the stacks of journals, papers and notebooks; pens and ink pots; animal bones. His gaze settled upon a jar full of green stones.

  Beaumont took up the jar. “Those came from a banker in Plattsburgh. They're gallstones.”

  He held the jar out to Alexis.

  The lad took it in hand and inspected it slowly, turning the jar over so the stones tumbled, and then he set it down.

  “They come from the gallbladder, right below the liver. Interesting, are they not?”

  Alexis nodded.

  “Alexis, you have a, you have what I can only call a gift, a unique gift.”

  Alexis looked puzzled.

  “What I mean is that you have something that you should share with others. That's what gifts are for.”

  “What should I share?”

  Beaumont leaned forward over his arms. “I know you haven't considered it this way, but your wound. Your wound, Alexis. It's a kind of miracle.”

  Alexis nodded slowly.

  “You have a wound that is without precedent, that is singular in the history of man. Your wound is a window into digestion. Through that hole the size of a half eagle you afford the opportunity for mankind to discover the secrets of one of the most essential parts of human health. Digestion.”

  Alexis pushed his hair back behind his ears. He blinked.

  “You're precisely what Father Didier would pronounce a miracle.”

  “Father Didier,” Alexis repeated.

  “That's right. A miracle. God has given you a great gift that you can use for the betterment of mankind. Think about that, Alexis.”

  “God cured me.”

  “And he also left you with a hole in your side.”

  “I'm better.”

  “Better yes, but that hole remains, and that hole is a window to a world waiting to be discovered. God has given you a great opportunity to serve your fellow man. To make their lives better. A kind of noble calling, I think.”

  Alexis swallowed hard.

  “Doctor, when can I go?”

  “That is a fair question to which I'm obliged to answer fairly. The chores you do about the house are light and fair compensation, I should say, for your meals, the roof above your head, for your clothing. Mrs. Beaumont and I took you in out of the depth of our concern and charity for you. One year ago, when you were still here in this hospital recovering, the town wanted to cast you off in a bateau. I would not have that. It would have killed you. That's why Mrs. Beaumont and I took you in: so that you might live.”

  “I thank you for that, Doctor. But now I want to go back to fur trapping. I need to. I owe the company money.”

  Beaumont managed to smile. “You don't need to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are no longer under the company's indenture.”

  “Why?”

  “Ramsay Crooks sold it to me, Alexis. You're clean and whole. Your debt is forgiven.”

  Alexis straightened in his chair.

  “So then I am bound to you?”

  “Don't be silly, Alexis. I don't deal in papers that bind one man to another. You're a free man. As I said, your debt is pa
id. My appeal is to your reason, Alexis, to the better angels of your virtue.”

  “I can trap fur for whosoever I desire.”

  “You can, yes you can, but why would you do that when God has granted us the opportunity of a lifetime? A very wise and famous man once said ‘What is serving God? 'Tis doing good to man.’ The only men entitled to happiness are those who are useful.”

  Alexis stared at his hands.

  “I'm to stay then?”

  “That in exchange for room and board. But what I am talking about is the opportunity of your wound, to study inside it, to see how digestion proceeds in a healthy man such as you. I continue as your doctor, taking notes as I have done, gathering the gastric liquor as I have done, measuring the pace of digestion. You're well acquainted with all that. In my profession, Alexis, we have as a matter of principle that some good must come from the suffering we minister to. So others don't suffer. Otherwise men would remain as brutes do. Medicine is a science, and a doctor is a teacher. It's all very well to trap fur, but here is a chance to do something that will improve the lot of man. What do you say? In truth, this is no different really than what we've been doing since you moved in with Deborah and petite Sarah.”

  Beaumont cleared his throat and began to wag a carbon pencil between his fingers with such speed that the image of the thing became a blur. Alexis sat with his eyes closed and lips moving as if performing a complicated mental calculation. Beaumont set the pencil down neatly and folded the fingers of his two hands together into a tight braid.

  “I'll pay you 15 dollars a month,” Beaumont said. In one swift gesture, Beaumont rose from his chair to his full height. The scrape of the legs upon the floor was harsh. He extended his right hand to Alexis.

  “Permit me to spare you the ciphering. That's 180 a year, Alexis. Fifteen paid in cash at the end of the month. With me covering your room and board, that is more than adequate, it's more like 20 dollars a month. Close to 200 or more a year.”

  Alexis opened his eyes and gazed at the right hand of his doctor. He crossed himself slowly, rose and extended his right hand across the desktop. They shook hands.

  “So this then is my job, working for you with my stomach?”

  Beaumont nodded. “That's a good lad.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  IN MAY, A LETTER ARRIVED THAT bore Surgeon General Lovell's distinct and elegant cursive. Beaumont swallowed as he popped the red wax seal, the bits falling onto his desk like sugar candy. His hands trembled. This letter had the power to cleave time into time past and time future. Lovell could reject the case, reject the plans for experiments, or he could suggest the experiments be done by more qualified physicians. He could even order Alexis sent to Washington for his own study. Or he could give Beaumont his support and the freedom to study the man.

  Dear Doctor Beaumont,

  I have received your letter enclosing your valuable communication of the case of the wounded stomach. The cure is a full demonstration of the wonderful powers of Nature and highly creditable to yourself. Agreeable to your suggestion, I shall send it to the Medical Recorder for publication.

  I will endeavor to send you some books of experiments on the gastric liquor, which will be somewhat of a guide to you in making your observations, which may be done with perfect ease and safety. It is stated, for example, that if several articles of food be taken into the stomach, that it would digest all of one kind first, then all of a second, and so on, and that this is the cause of the bad effects of a variety of food at the same meal.

  Suppose a man eat beef, potatoes, fish, cabbage and pudding. It is expected that he will first digest all the beef, the others in the meantime remaining untouched. Then all of the pudding, then all the potatoes, and lastly the cabbage.

  Now, it is thought that if he eat a dozen articles, by the time the stomach has disposed of eight or ten, it will become exhausted, and the rest will be left to ferment and produce indigestion and its consequent evils. Could you make an experiment to ascertain this, and also the digestibility of various articles?

  This alone would afford a most valuable paper for publication. I should be happy to receive an account of any experiments or observations you may make, and they will not doubt be very acceptable to the public.

  Yours truly,

  Surgeon General Joseph Lovell

  Two days later, an inspired Dr. William Beaumont sat with knife and cutting board at the kitchen table. He prepared pieces of high-seasoned beef, raw salted fat pork, raw salted lean beef, boiled salted beef, bread and a bunch of raw cabbage. Each he cut to weigh about two drachms, making his best estimate of the weight. The cabbage he sliced into finger-length strips. He uncoiled a length of silk string, some two feet he estimated from the tip of his middle finger to his elbow, cut it, and secured the seasoned beef to the end, measured the distance of his forefinger along the string and there secured the piece of pork and so on until he had secured each piece of food in a kind of chain. Then he cut the excess of the string.

  He admired the precision of his work. The thing turned clockwise, stopped, then turned counterclockwise.

  Around noon, Alexis stepped indoors from his chores. The past several days had been unusually hot and dry. The air was heavy and still. Horses had kicked up dust that lingered in the air like smoke. Men moved slowly and napped at noon beneath shade trees.

  Alexis was barefoot and dressed in a close-fitting pair of breeches and a sleeveless gray shirt damp with sweat at his chest and armpits. He had washed his face in the rain barrel, and his damp hair was slicked back. He took up the water pitcher, filled his wooden cup and took a great drink, poured himself another drink, then eased himself into his customary place at the table.

  There were no platters on the table.

  “Am I late?”

  Beaumont was closing up the ice chest, from which he was removing a porcelain basin containing the articles of food for the experiment.

  “No, no, not at all. Mrs. Beaumont is out with the children for the day. It's Monday. Washing day. They should return after noon, but I've got your supper ready. It's a full meal.”

  Beaumont stood in his shirtsleeves. He held the basin in one arm and gestured to it with the other. “The only difference—and a slight difference at that—is that I'll put it in as I've done before, through the hole to your stomach. I think you'll like it. A meal of seasoned beef, fat pork, some salted beef, bread, of course, and some cabbage. You take that in, go back to work, and I'll check on the progress of your digestion. All of it as we've done before many times, only this time the circumstances are more controlled.”

  Alexis looked at Beaumont. “What if I still have hunger?”

  “By the evening meal you'll be set to eat more. You had a thorough breakfast this morning. Four, perhaps five hours, is all I'd think.”

  Alexis drained his cup.

  Beaumont gestured to the door to Alexis's room. “So then,” he announced. “Step into your room. It'll just take a moment, and then you're back to work.”

  Alexis lay on his cot with his arms folded behind his head and his legs straight and uncrossed. The two men had discovered that when Alexis was stretched out in this position it eased the opening of the flap of gastric tissue that secured the hole closed. Beaumont slid the length of his index finger into the hole. The cavity was warm and moist and entirely empty. He removed the cloth from the basin wherein he kept the garland of food and held it up so its contents uncoiled. He eased it into the hole. Alexis winced as it crossed the tender cuticle. A good twelve inches of string remained outside the aperture, and this Beaumont coiled securely about a four-inch, flat piece of polished mahogany, curved so that it sat firmly against the wound and shaped to assure it could not enter the hole.

  He took note of the time.

  Alexis looked down at the piece of mahogany.

  “That secures the silk thread upon which are the articles of food you're digesting for supper.” Beaumont produced a roll of bandages. “Now then, raise up your arms. Y
ou know the drill.”

  He covered the wound with a simple crossing of bandages.

  “Good then. I'll have a look in an hour. Here you are.”

  He held out Alexis's shirt.

  As Alexis swept, Beaumont took up his notebook and carbon. He began to write but then he stopped. He sat for a moment, and then he took out the letter from Lovell and reread it. This alone would afford a most valuable paper for publication. First he would publish his case report, then his study of the digestibility of multiple articles of alimentation. In just one year, his two papers would enter his name into the medical literature. First fame. Fortune would follow.

 

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