Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

by Jason Karlawish

  “I paid the man!” Beaumont slapped the page with the back of his hand. “Paid him out of my own pocket!”

  He was even more vexed by Alexis.

  In February, Alexis had sent a brief note explaining that the sick child was well again but that his wife's illness now left them penniless and his simple farm needed attention. He needed more funds. Beaumont reluctantly advanced him money. Alexis never replied. Beaumont grew desperate to have him back and to travel to the universities and cities. He planned a series of paid lectures and demonstrations designed not only to sell the book but to refute the critics. His letters to Theodore Mathews grew increasingly desperate.

  Dear Theodore,

  Will you do me a last favor, if you can endure the disagreeable condescension of seeing Alexis, to ascertain his situation, disposition and determinations, if practicable, and communicate them, with your own views and opinions on the subject?

  I would not have troubled you yet again on the disagreeable subject, had not the necessity of the case required it. Not to regain control of or to leave him behind seems like abandoning an important object, and sacrificing almost all that has been done. I know well his disposition and ugliness and hope rightly to defeat them. In due time, he will have spent all the money I advanced him, become miserably poor and wretched and be willing to recant his villainous obstinacy and ugliness, and then I shall be able to regain possession of him again. But I constantly fear he may lease himself to some of the medical men in Canada and so get his case into the hand of the English Doctors.

  You can readily appreciate my anxiety and the deep interest I feel in the case. I fear I am left in the predicament of 1825. I hope to receive the earliest possible intelligence that may be communicated through the military mails.

  Most sincerely,

  Wm. Beaumont

  Surgeon in the U.S. Army

  FORTY-THREE

  IN MID-MAY, BEAUMONT WAS AT FORT PREBLE in Portland, Maine. He dined with Captain Chamberlain, the fort's commander, and the captain's wife. He entertained them with stories of his adventures along the Western frontier, the Indians in Prairie du Chien, and the months in Washington City. He narrated the events at the White House Christmas party, the dinner at Edward Everett's. He told them of the book. But the captain remained reticent. The man ate briskly, then excused himself to tend to paperwork.

  “You'll have to pardon him,” his wife explained. “Ever since he came back from fighting the Seminoles with General Jackson some years back, he's gotten even quieter. Strange things happen, and he just watches them. This winter whole bushels of cod just washed up on the beach. Piles of them, thrown up from the ocean. But he didn't say a thing. You'd think it was just another ordinary day in Portland.”

  THE ASSEMBLY AT THE OFFICER'S mess of Fort Preble was just five men. The fort had few recruits, and its surgeon, a Dr. Creamer, was a diminutive man who paid little attention to his duties. The few patients in the hospital were invalids with chronic ailments that Beaumont concluded would have remitted had Creamer applied aggressive treatment instead of his hesitant prescriptions of homeopathic tinctures and salves.

  They had pulled the dining table to the corner of the room and set the chairs in a kind of semicircle before the iron stove. At the center of the arc Beaumont told the group the story of Alexis St. Martin, the living, healthy digesting miracle. There was a lectern, but he had set it aside and remained in his chair. He explained the secrets of the gastric juice, the proper ratios of the portion of aliment to juice, and to better engage the men, asked one, an attorney, what he had eaten that night for dinner.

  “Roast beef, boiled potatoes and carrots, Doctor.”

  Beaumont estimated the time to digest each article of aliment. The lawyer nodded appreciatively. The other men murmured.

  “And, may I ask, did you have any spirituous liquors?”

  They lawyer nodded. “It is my custom with a meal to take a single glass of Madeira. I've done so since I was a young man. My father did, and he lived to some sixty years, and I shall continue the habit, subject to your advice and counsel, of course.”

  Beaumont nodded respectfully.

  “Wine has its role in health. I prescribe it from time to time myself for an understimulated constitution, but we should not think that it has nutritive principles.”

  The lawyer's great eyebrows lifted.

  “None?” asked Dr. Creamer.

  Beaumont turned to face the physician. “Yes, Doctor, that's right. None. Once in contact with the gastric juice, it fails to coagulate in any form. But milk!” Beaumont surveyed his small audience. A man who was near asleep roused. “Milk, gentlemen, is, I think, one of the most nutritive substances, for it readily coagulates upon contact with the juice and is easily taken up by the gastric vessels.”

  A middle-aged man, who had introduced himself as a dry goods store owner and banker spoke up.

  “My wife complains of pains when she takes milk. Why's that?”

  This was the kind of questions that Beaumont disdained. “Not having the occasion to examine your wife, to interview her, I am at a loss to say, but I can assure you that the answers to all her questions, to all your questions about digestion, are contained herein.”

  Beaumont tapped the cover of his book.

  The shopkeeper was not satisfied.

  “Hers though, Doctor, seem less gastric and more in the lower regions of the bowels.”

  A young man who had been jotting notes raised his hand.

  Beaumont pointed to him. “Yes?”

  “Dr. Beaumont, sir, I'm sorry I was late to the gathering. My name's Quentin, sir. I live in town and work as a clerk in the mercantile shop. I was wondering what advice you can give a young man such as myself who seeks to make his fortune in the world and what you've learned in your travels about the prospects of steam power for locomotive transportation across the country.”

  Beaumont nodded.

  “Time and patience are indispensable to all laudable undertakings, for you know, young man, if to do were as easy as telling others what to do, poor men's huts would be palaces. I lived for many, many years on the American frontier. Indeed, as I said, that's where I met Alexis—yes, I know you missed that part of the lecture. In such places, as in the cities, there is much to distract a man, especially a young man such as yourself. To speak frankly in a group such as this, there is the lovesick trash of novel reading, the copper-colored Indian, ardent spirits. In those times, there was a whiskey ration. Under such conditions, I found Dr. Benjamin Franklin's virtue diary a most helpful aid for success.

  “I commend that to you. You'll find it in his Autobiography. He sets out a simple thirteen-step method to master the virtues and, in so doing, tame the vices as well. I did it when I was a young man, a bit older than you perhaps, and it has served me well. With that as your guide and by dint of your labor you should expect success. For this is America. A country of the future, of beginnings and projects, of vast designs and expectations. It is a country that rewards ambition.”

  Beaumont leaned in to the young man, the better to engage his unblinking blue eyes.

  “Ambition is God-given. Imitation of our fellow man is one way that God brings us to our natural perfection. But without ambition, if we simply imitated our fellows, followed the other and such in an eternal circle, there would be no improvement in man. To prevent this God has planted in man a sense of ambition and the satisfaction arising from the contemplation of excelling his fellows in something deemed valuable among them. These are the mallets that break the cycle of imitation and out of that create the advantages we all derive in civilized life. But that same passion hinders others from granting genius its due.”

  He took up the book and held it before himself with two hands as a cleric displays scripture.

  “My book is the definitive study of the powers of digestion. Definitive. It records the unvarnished truth and, with that truth, casts light upon the darkness of belief. Slave to no hypothesis and free from the tr
ammels of theory and prejudice, but servant only to my honest and humble trust in the powers of observation and hard work and the true frontier spirit, I observed digestion in all conditions, under all circumstances. The march of knowledge, of progress, is ever onward. I have recorded some fifty principles, examined digestion both in the healthy and the pathological states, in natural and artificial conditions. I have procured the pure gastric juice in sufficient quantities to examine its chemical constituents.”

  He carried on for five more minutes about the book and his labors and the promise of hard work and dedication to a task.

  WITHIN A HALF HOUR, the evening petered out. The shopkeeper asked to purchase a copy of Experiments and Observations, but when Beaumont named the price of three dollars, the man pinched his brow. He had only two dollars. The shopkeeper looked expectantly at the other men, but none offered him the loan.

  “Could I possibly pay you the two dollars and bring you the full sum tomorrow in the afternoon?”

  “I leave for Houlton in the morning. Could you get me the cash by morning?”

  The shopkeeper mumbled as he cinched his leather purse true, then slipped it deep into his coat pocket. “I can manage that.”

  BEAUMONT'S ROOM at the barracks was a small, unadorned cell with space for a table, a chair and a narrow cot. The floor was thick with grit and sand that scraped beneath his boots. When he returned, he found on the tabletop a parcel of seven letters tied with a twine. A note from the orderly read, These followed you up from the barracks at Eastport.

  He set down his candle and raised the parcel by the tip of the twine so that the weight of the letters untied the bow and the letters slid out across the tabletop. He recognized several of the senders: Surgeon General Lovell, the secretary of the Columbia Medical Society, Deborah. Others came from authors he did not recognize. None bore the odd slanted cursive of the parish priest to whom Alexis dictated his letters. He sliced Deborah's letter open with his pen knife.

  30 April 1834.

  My Dearest William,

  We are all well as common. I write from Samuel's desk beside the parlor where Little Bud races about like a puppy who is in and on and out of everything whilst his sisters and cousins positively dote upon him so that he is very spoiled and sometimes naughty. Sarah has become the little lady about the house who practices her piano daily for her Papa, and Lucretia has learned now to sing. They ask of you often.

  Such is the hasty passage of time. It shall be two years this autumn that we left Prairie du Chien. The roses Mary and I planted last Spring in the south facing garden have managed to survive the winter, in proud defiance of the storms.

  The habit of my days is marked by the passage of the mails. I have read and reread now more times than I can count your story of your journey to New Haven, the workings of the steamship and the grand reception at the Connecticut Medical Society and the professors of the college.

  Tomorrow I hope that I shall hear from you, and know if you have seen all the latest mighty puffs about you. I need not say how much I feel gratified by the encomiums bestowed upon your work by the public. I see that one of the editors pronounced you a great scholar. That was particularly pleasing, as on that point Samuel was most uneasy, as he said neither you nor him self were either scholars or university trained. May you see all your wishes accomplished and be ready ere long to settle down quietly with your family, who all love you so much, is the prayer of your wife.

  I remain as ever, your loving,

  Debbie

  He sat stock-still at the desk, tears dripping onto the letter, smearing his wife's signature.

  A knock sounded at his door.

  “Dr. Beaumont, sir? Doctor, are you there?”

  It was the orderly. The young man's voice grew muffled as he turned away from the door. “I saw the doctor enter just several minutes ago. I can't imagine he's that sound asleep.”

  “Yes, coming,” Beaumont called.

  He wiped his eyes, refolded the letter and then stepped to the door.

  “Doctor, beg your pardon, sir, but there's a caller who's most intent on seeing you, and seeing as you leave bright and early tomorrow, I thought it prudent to make the introduction now.”

  “God, please let it be him,” murmured Beaumont. The idea seemed absurd, but Canada was close. “If it is him, I promise all will be forgiven. He shall be as my brother.”

  The door was now fully opened. The orderly held a lantern before him.

  “Are you well, sir?”

  “I'm fine. Tired, as you can expect.”

  Beaumont gazed past the clerk.

  It was the shopkeeper. He held forth the book.

  “I'm sorry, Doctor. My wife, she says the cost is too much for our modest budget. You know how a woman can be with a man's purse.” The shop-keeper smiled, but Beaumont's countenance was stony. The clerk cleared his throat. “I knew you were to travel early, so here you are. Perhaps you could summarize the best and most practical bits into a penny pamphlet? That would make it more accessible to all classes of the reading public.”

  He held the book with two hands as if it were a tray, but one empty of offerings.

  “I think it wise she simply abstain from milk, don't you?”

  Beaumont reached into his pocket and produced the two dollars. He laid it on the clerk's palm and took the book.

  “Yes, that seems wise. Good evening to you, sir.”

  BY JUNE, his situation had begun to disintegrate. He had returned to his wife and children. Deborah embraced him as if he were a mere acquaintance. Sarah sucked her thumb, Lucretia hid, and the baby Israel cried. Surgeon General Lovell sent Beaumont orders to proceed with all haste to the Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, but Alexis had not returned to Plattsburgh. Beaumont pled his situation to Major Pembroke, the commander of the Plattsburgh garrison.

  The man listened gravely as Beaumont petitioned for the company and the army to coordinate one final effort to return this national treasure to America. When Beaumont finished, Pembroke looked to his clerk. The young man was sitting before a cluttered rolltop desk; he looked at Beaumont.

  “This the French fella who was in Mackinac back in the twenties, the one you wrote that funny book about?”

  Beaumont nodded sharply. “That's where I saved his life.”

  “Isaiah Pearce was commander there.”

  Beaumont nodded again.

  “We served together.” He pushed his inkwell about his desk. And then he stopped and let the thing rest. “Other day we had a slaver fella up from Georgia dressed all fancy with a watch and a chain and some kind of velvet vest or something, wonderin' if we could help him gather up some of his runaway slaves over in Canada. Didn't we, Jimmy? Goddamn Nullifier he was, bet you that.”

  The clerk nodded.

  Beaumont bristled. “Sir, this man is a sergeant in the United States Army.”

  The major cut him off.

  “I know what in Sam Hill he is, Doctor. And I also know where he is too.” He gestured to Beaumont with his index finger. “Now what I don't quite know is what you and Doc Lovell have cooked up here, but I tell you this. There's nothing I can do. Nothing. Can't send federal troops over the border to fetch your digesting machine. That'd be a right and proper act of war. And this army ain't for hire. You want your Frenchman back, well then, send him another love letter. That's all I can say. Good day, sir.”

  The major looked to his clerk. “Now who's next, Jimmy?”

  BEAUMONT WROTE LOVELL a four-page letter pleading his case to remain at the Plattsburgh garrison examining recruits. I require more time, desperate as I am to obtain the dastardly Frenchman before I depart. Just the other week I have learned from reliable correspondents that a society of vegetarians are determined to have him in order to refute the conclusion that vegetable aliment is more difficult than animal to digest. He argued his seniority, appealed to the principles of justice and fairness, reiterated the great value of Alexis to American science and scientific advancement. He cited
the case of Surgeon Morgan in New York who held his preferred posting some twelve continuous years.

  Lovell replied that his jar of favors was running low, and he begged his friend to understand the strain upon the overstretched surgeons corps. You successfully prosecuted some of your finest experiments in the rough conditions of Prairie du Chien. Why not then in St. Louis, where I am told the accommodations are most commodious?

  Beaumont offered to take the assignment as a temporary posting and thereby keep his family in Plattsburgh. Failing that, he began to negotiate every detail, the terms of the leaving, the transport of his family and their belongings, the payment of his salary. And he posted urgent letters to Theodore Mathews and Ramsay Crooks. Show him payments if you must—but not one wooden nickel into his dirty palm.