Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

by Jason Karlawish

  “No, William, I don't.”

  “I'm the commander, the one who will have just and fair claim to the fruits of our sacrifice, and I intend to use every possible means to see to their success. Lovell likes me. That is why I remain in the army. I have his support, and I shall use it to its fullest to finish this book. Were I simply in private practice, I'd not have such a powerful friend.”

  “You say it shall be for just one year?”

  He nodded.

  She shuddered.

  “Hold me please, William.”

  He wrapped her in his arms. The sharp edge of her Bible cut into his chest.

  “I love you, Debbie.”

  “I love you too, William.”

  15 September 1830

  Dear Dr. Lovell,

  The situation being as it has been on this far western frontier, I fear my letter of the 1st of August has not yet reached you, or if it has, that your reply is entangled in the confused transport of materials & supplies. And so forgive me, but I am compelled to write again for I remain anxious to obtain a period of leave from my garrison duties for one year in order to devote myself fully and tirelessly to experiments and observations among the medical experts of the East Coast as well as those in Europe. My Frenchman is eager to make this trip & see these places. I am certain he shall come.

  I implore you sir, to see to the Justice of my request. With an election year looming in Congress I fear that our Legislators will have little concern or inclination to help in the affairs of the medical department. Hence, your urgent action is needed. I have been banished from society and compelled to live outside the pale of civilization for 14 successive years constantly at arduous duties. Privation, hardship and injustice are imposed on a few medical officers long stationed on the extreme frontier. officers of every other section and department of the service are freely and frequently granted indulgences. The officers of the northwestern frontier should occasionally get the same.

  Despite the conditions of the place, the considerable hardships my family has suffered, I have dedicated myself tirelessly to creating one of the finest Hospital establishments in the army. Should a replacement surgeon not be readily at hand, I recommend without hesitation my steward, C. H. Badger, a most able and proficient physician and fully competent to assume the role as physician in chief in the interim. I would feel confident to entrust the medical duties of the command to this young man than to employing any physician in the vicinity of Prairie du Chien for their lot are itinerant, speculating Doctors in whose talents, or integrity I could neither repose confidence, nor even recommend to the employment of the government, with half the cheerfulness & safety as I could Young Badger.

  For personal reasons relating to his wife and family, Alexis must depart soon for Canada & I out of duty have granted him this leave but I fear that with every month away, his duty to me will Evaporate & that once He is in Canada, the English doctors will lay claim to Him and he will be lost from us forever.

  Sincerely,

  William Beaumont, MD

  Surgeon, U.S. Army

  Beaumont became the model of efficiency and military precision. In September, when the inspector came to survey the hospital, he kept the man busy for two days listening to detailed discourses about the proper instruments necessary for a modern garrison hospital and the need for a replacement set of surgical tools. He proposed a list of books that should be mandatory at all garrisons, urged the purchase of a barometer and thermometer.

  In the months before Alexis gathered his wife and three children to depart Prairie du Chien, as the spring melt set in and trading routes began to reopen, panic rose in Beaumont that his plan would fail, that Alexis would never rejoin him. The panic drove him to work. He studied Alexis daily, collecting vials of gastric juice, setting up his sand bath and measuring the pace of digestion there and in the cavity of Alexis's stomach, sampling the contents hourly: venison steak, the white of two eggs, roast beef, roasted pig, wild goose. Every supper for weeks at a time.

  Each event displayed new facts. The effect of two days of fever showed masticated food insoluble in Alexis's stomach. Beaumont concluded the importance of withholding food from the stomach in febrile complaints. It can afford no nourishment; but is actually a source of irritation to that organ, and, consequently, to the whole system. Early one afternoon, while Beaumont sampled the chyme from a breakfast of pork, bread and potatoes, Alexis rose up from his cot and snapped “Ça suffit.” He began yelling in French.

  “Easy there, Alexis. Speak English.”

  Alexis just stood there, red faced, the angles of his jaw pulsing.

  “Is there some problem? Some pain?” Beaumont gestured to the stomach. “You've nearly digested,” he insisted.

  Alexis only shook his head slowly.

  “Well then, would you please lie back down?”

  Within a few minutes, Beaumont observed how yellow bile now tinged the chyme. It was glorious work, making sense of the common wisdom of medicine that anger retarded appetite and produced a bitter bile in one's throat. Conclusions were irresistible.

  On April 12, 1831, one year and ten months since Alexis arrived in Prairie du Chien and three days after Alexis's last supper under Beaumont's hourly observations, Beaumont met the St. Martin family at the docks of Prairie du Chien.

  A work crew was busy tearing out the dock's rotting planking as Alexis loaded his family's belongings into a company bateau. He was careful with their bundles and trunks, taking care that they were snug and well packed. He helped his wife step into her seat; then his son handed his mother the infant Henriette.

  Beaumont extended his right hand.

  “Farewell, Alexis,” he said. “You needn't worry about writing. The company shall keep me posted. I'll call on you as soon as we arrive in Plattsburgh.”

  Alexis shook Beaumont's hand, then stepped into the boat.

  The St. Martins were bound for the Ohio River via the Mississippi. As Beaumont watched the line of four boats dipping their oars to make their way downstream into the middle waters of the Mississippi, he decided one year would not be adequate. In these last two months he had discovered wonderful things, and there was so much more to discover. He wished to repeat an experiment he'd done a few weeks earlier in which he'd compared digestion of a parcel of food suspended in the stomach, to another in the sand bath, to a third vial tucked under Alexis's arm. The idea of axillary placement of a vial had come to him late one evening in an inspiration. He saw this as a method to reproduce the natural variations in the body's temperature without the mechanical action of the stomach. And there were the incomplete tables on digestibility of articles of food, both in the stomach and in vials. There was perhaps no border to this frontier.

  THIRTY-SIX

  ON THE MORNING OF THE 29TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1832, a coach rolled to a halt before the home of Samuel Beaumont in Plattsburgh, New York. The four horses at harness shook their heads and stomped their forelegs as the coachman gathered their reins and clucked his tongue to calm them. Behind him two penny travelers sat on the rooftop.

  A young boy sprang up from his seat on an overturned bucket and ran forward to the coach. Before he could reach it, the door swung open so hard it slapped the coach side. The boy halted in midstep. The second door opened with slightly more care, and William Beaumont emerged, wincing momentarily from pain in his right knee. He smoothed his jacket front and took in the view of the house and its yard, cluttered with wheelbarrows, a wagon, several barrels and rakes of various dimensions. A chicken scurried around the house.

  William Beaumont strode forward to the boy. His step was quick despite a limp. He was grinning.

  “Here then, you're Young Willy?”

  He placed a fond hand on the boy's tangled black hair.

  The boy mumbled something like yes sir.

  “I'm your uncle William, uncle of sorts. Your father and I are cousins. We've several trunks on top. Help the coachman with them. I'll tend to your aunt and cousins. Here you ar
e, lad.” He palmed the boy a coin.

  He turned and swung down first his daughter Sarah, then Lucretia.

  “Sarah, help your mother there with your brother.”

  Sarah reached into the coach and took the infant Israel into her arms. Lucretia was spinning around on the lawn so that the ribbons in her hair turned out as if on a May pole.

  Beaumont took Deborah's hand and helped her from the coach.

  “We're here.”

  She smiled.

  “Yes we are.”

  The door to the house opened, and Samuel Beaumont stood at the worn threshold. In the fifteen years since their last reunion, he had lost considerably more hair. His pate was now bald and shiny. He'd also abandoned his business as a printer and become a physician.

  “Alice,” Samuel called over his shoulder. “They're here.”

  Several children came racing out from behind him, and then came Alice. The yard was a crowd of children and adults, three excited dogs and a stack of trunks.

  Samuel embraced his cousin. “You're two days early.”

  “We took a coach from Sackett's Harbor. The thing travels like lightning.”

  “Two more days then to enjoy your company. Have you eaten?”

  They had not eaten since sunrise.

  “Well, come in, come in. Let's gather your things and have some breakfast.”

  The children scrambled around the coach, laughing as they began to grab the trunks and bags, the little ones hefting them like sacks of flour while Alice attempted to direct them.

  “You've a well-settled home here, Samuel,” Beaumont said.

  Samuel demurred.

  “The place is in sorry shape.”

  “Has a man named Alexis St. Martin called? A French Canadian. Young fella. Have you heard any word?”

  Samuel shook his head. “Called here?”

  “Yes.”

  Samuel shook his head again.

  Beaumont seemed to relax.

  “Very well then, let's get Deborah and the children settled, and then I have to tell you about some business. Are you able to walk with me into town? Does a Jonathan Woodward still have his law offices and the American Fur Company an agent?”

  Samuel was bemused.

  “So quick to business, William. Yes, Jonathan thrives at his many ventures, and there is an agent at the dockyards. I have cases to call on, so we both have reason to venture to town.”

  WITHIN THE HOUR, the two Beaumont cousins were walking into the town of Plattsburgh.

  Samuel, though younger by ten years, was shorter and stockier than his cousin and was soon breathing heavily as he kept up with William's long-legged stride. William was telling Samuel the story of Alexis St. Martin, his wound, the four experiments he'd published in the Medical Recorder, his return to Prairie du Chien and his successful negotiations with Dr. Lovell to secure a year's leave.

  “I fully intend now to devote myself to the study of digestion and then to return to the army with Alexis as my particular charge.”

  “Here then? Deborah's last letter suggested that you all were moving here.”

  “We are. I'm sorry if it's all a bit confusing. The details only fell into place in the last few months. You can't imagine how difficult it's been to arrange for this leave, coordinate Alexis's arrival with my friends and contacts in the American Fur Company and arrange things for the coming year of study. I've waited seven years for this. Seven.”

  Beaumont stopped speaking and let out a small laugh.

  “What is it, William?”

  “I was counting the years. I'm mistaken. It has in fact been ten years since I met him when he was a lad. When I was stationed in Mackinac. Ten years almost to this month when I first realized that the wound was a unique opportunity. It seems so long ago. Like I was a different person.”

  “How long will this Alexis remain here?”

  “What's that?”

  “I was asking how long you shall be here, your plans of research.”

  “I trust only a few days. As soon as I have him here and some paperwork is done, we leave for Washington and then Paris.”

  “Paris? You can't be serious?”

  “I am. It's the temple of medical research. There I shall make a study of him and exhibit him to the leading scientists. This will not only assure the research reflects the latest advances in physiology but also will open up the European market for the book. London is nearby. I shall likely take him there too. Moreover, the farther he is from his shrew of a wife, the better for my work. I learned many lessons all too well in my years in Prairie du Chien.”

  “Book?”

  “Yes. I intend to publish the experiments in a book. Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and Digestion. That's the working title, and it's outlined now to five sections: aliment, hunger, satiety and so on. The most important of which is digestion by the gastric juice. This shall be in every home in America. Everyone eats.”

  Samuel stopped walking. “Let's catch our breath.”

  The two men halted. Samuel took out his kerchief and wiped his brow and the smooth dome of his head. He looked at his cousin. “But what of Deborah and the children? You've just fathered your son Israel.”

  “I don't deny it's a sacrifice. But science demands this of me. The treasure that is that wound is deep and rich. And I could just as well be called off to war.”

  Samuel nodded to a passing laborer who greeted him as Dr. Beaumont. He looked at William. “Yes, of course. You could just as well be called to war.”

  “I shall need your help, Samuel. Your skills as a former printer. Can you help me locate a printer and see that the job is done right and at a fair price and that subscriptions are properly solicited? I've some money, but I'm not a rich man.”

  “I suppose I can, William, though I myself no longer am in the business, you know that. I still have the acquaintance of Francis Allen, the man I sold my business to. I can certainly introduce you to him and see that the negotiations are fair and proper.”

  Beaumont clasped his cousin's shoulders.

  “That would be splendid, Sam, absolutely splendid. And see to it that he does not take this Connecticut farm boy for a fool and defraud me of my meager wealth? I've not a clue what this should cost. Only that I need to bang the drum loud for subscriptions.”

  “A clever Connecticut farm boy, I'd say. Your father always said you were the cleverest of the lot. Of course I shall help. There are several technical considerations, such as the paper and binding. Francis is reputable, but in the hands of a Boston or Philadelphia printer you might be out several hundred dollars before you have even your first copy in hand.”

  Beaumont embraced his cousin.

  “Thank you. I can't tell you how much this means to me. The publication of this book shall be a triumph for American medicine. That's why I'm off to see Mr. Woodward. I must bind the ungrateful man to me, as a covenant servant of sorts. You see I've tried and failed to appeal to Alexis's duty, to his spirit of fairness, to industriousness. I've come to understand that his kind are not capable of such rational appeals. That was my folly. His are a more passionate, undemocratic kind who respond to pleasure and passion, and to power. Like an Indian. By God, it's been ten years, but on a clear day I can see hints of the shore.”

  “But are you sure it's China?”

  “What?”

  “China. When Italian and Spanish explorers came here they thought they were in China. That's what they desired. And look what they got.”

  JONATHAN WOODWARD'S well-appointed office overlooked the town square and the Greek revival façade of the Clinton County courthouse. Woodward offered Beaumont a glass of sherry which Beaumont declined. They settled in chairs with the polished expanse of the split-top mahogany table between them. Benjamin Moores, Woodward's diminutive secretary, sat nearby with paper and pens.

  They talked about the town, the sale of the Green family's United States Hotel and the auction of its contents.

  “I've got one
of their fish-eye mirrors here somewhere.” Woodward glanced around the room. “Where is that? Had my eye on it since I first saw it. Oh yes, there.” He pointed to the wall above a matching pair of side tables, their legs tapered and inlaid, their tops cluttered with decorative porcelains.