Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

by Jason Karlawish

  Henry Geyer had charge of making the case to the jury.

  “Gentlemen of the jury, William Darnes is guilty. He is guilty of attacking Mr. Andrew Davis. Yes, he struck him on the head, struck him repeatedly. This we do not contest. We also do not contest that it was Mr. Davis who first attacked Mr. Darnes. Weekly in the pages of the Missouri Argus. Called him a coward. In print for all to read forever and ever. Insulted the man's name. His reputation. Mr. Darnes did what any man so assaulted and injured would do. He could not flee his oppressor. So he fought back.

  “But that's not why we're here. We're here because some allege that he murdered Mr. Davis. Killed him. Mr. Davis sustained his wounds on the 16th of February. Mr. Davis died on the 21st. Seven days after his beating.”

  Geyer held up his two hands and raised one, two, three, seven fingers. “Seven days.” He lowered his hands.

  “In that time, he was the victim of slipshod, negligent and ultimately lethal medical care.”

  The spectators gasped and began to chatter. Judge Lucas whapped his mallet to silence them. Dr. William Beaumont raised his chin higher.

  “Mr. Davis died as a consequence of the unskillful treatment of his physicians. This procedure, this trephining, is a kind of carving of a hole in the head by means of a circular saw of sorts. You have heard from five physicians, five, and to a one, I think I deduce that should a physician ever order that I receive a hole in my head by means of the trephine, I should just as soon order an undertaker.”

  For several minutes, Geyer carried on about the procedure and its risks. He quoted from the physicians who had testified. He cited textbooks of medicine. He read from the writing of the eminent surgeon Sir Astley Cooper. He enumerated the conditions that would warrant the operation and contested each one in the care of Mr. Davis. Then he paused and surveyed the jury.

  “I suppose in the end all operations have their risks, their indications, their purposes, and we trust that a competent physician, skilled in the care of his patient, will exercise judgment as to when it is proper to subject his patient to those risks. Well then, who was that physician?

  “It was not Dr. Sykes. It was not Dr. McMartin. Each declined to operate. They deferred the task to a third doctor. Dr. William Beaumont. They called on Dr. William Beaumont to perform this most delicate of operations. The famous Dr. William Beaumont, we were told, and those are not my words, but Dr. McMartin's words. They are Dr. Sykes's words as well. In all St. Louis, the good Dr. Beaumont is the most renowned physician. That's what they say.”

  Geyer stood with his arms akimbo. “Now that is impressive,” he announced.

  “And why is this man renowned? For the study of trephining? No sirs. For some grand accomplishment with the operation in question, some progress in the field of making holes in men's heads? Again, the answer is a simple no. His fame is for leaving a hole in a man's stomach. That's right—the stomach—so as to use that hole for the purposes of experiments upon that man. And not one experiment, but many, multiple, repeated experiments upon the stomach of the Canadian Alexis St. Martin. For years. Hundreds of experiments upon a hole in the side of a poor fur trapper. Putting food in and taking it out. Right here, sirs. You can read it yourselves.”

  Geyer swept up a book from the table beside him.

  “I have here a copy of the book. Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion by William Beaumont, MD, Surgeon in the U.S. Army.”

  Deborah gasped. She looked at her husband. He continued to stare, unblinking, at the attorney.

  Geyer opened to a page as if at random and read from the text.

  “Experiment number forty-six. April nine, at 3 o'clock p.m., he dined on boiled dried codfish, potatoes, parsnips, bread and drawn butter, at 3 o'clock, 30 minutes, examined and took out a portion, about half digested; the potatoes the least so of any part of the dinner. The fish was broken down into small filaments. The bread and parsnips were not to be distinguished.”

  Geyer pressed his lips together into a simian frown. He shrugged. He closed the book.

  “That's just one of many, many, many experiments he performed on this maimed survivor of a shotgun blast. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Well then, if such a book as this—putting food in, taking it out—confers immortality upon a man, I myself could scrape together a few facts, write them up in a pamphlet and let posthumous time declare my fame.

  “More to the point for the case at hand, how is it that a man famous for counting the time to see how long beef—boiled, raw and fricasseed—takes to digest in the bag of the stomach, in a vial of gastric juice, sometimes kept under Alexis's arm, how does such expertise qualify a man to know when, whether and how to drill a hole in a wounded man's head? The wisdom of this book—let's see here, he ends with several inferences—that the action of the stomach, and its fluids are the same on all kinds of diet—well, that's interesting, perhaps useful.”

  Several spectators tittered.

  “And we're told there are editions in Europe. That is all very fine. Not only is the good Dr. Beaumont famous right here in our fine city of St. Louis, Missouri, in the United States of America, but so too in far away London, England and Prussia too. But that does not qualify Dr. Beaumont to know when, or whether or how to drill a hole into Mr. Davis's head.

  “No doubt, sirs, the doctor is a curious man. Hundreds of experiments demonstrate this. No doubt, he is a veritable explorer who kept the hole open in that man's side to satisfy that scientific curiosity. And I submit to you that it is that very same principle of curiosity, that same insatiable ambition which kept the hole open in the man's stomach, that urged him to bore a hole into Andrew Davis's head to see what was going on there! Mr. Davis was to be one more maimed survivor of this doctor's operations to satisfy his scientific curiosity!”

  “Hear, hear!” cried a man in the audience. Judge Lucas slammed his mallet doubly as he insisted upon silence in his court. Geyer waited for the room to settle, then faced the jury.

  Deborah leaned to her husband's ear. “William,” she whispered. “William, please, let us go.” But her husband only stiffened.

  “Mr. Davis died at the hands of the curious, eager, ambitious scientist. What has become of the maimed man with the hole in his side? He lives in Canada. Did the experiments end? The table of the time to digest articles of aliment suggest no. He did not study the meat of the elk, the flesh of the orange. He tells you at the end of his book that the contents of the gastric liquor remain a mystery. Some sort of chemical.”

  A man chuckled, and Geyer glanced at him. “That's right, sir, a mystery.” Geyer then surveyed the courtroom.

  “Odd, isn't it, that the work just stopped. Like that.” Geyer snapped his fingers.

  “If the work was so valuable, so very, very valuable, you would think the famous Dr. Beaumont would have carried on with it. Even now, right here at the Medical College, or at some other fine establishment of St. Louis science. Perhaps even Boston. Or Philadelphia. You have been told that the man still lives. Why isn't he here with his doctor?

  “It is important that you know the full measure of a man. Where he's been and where he's not been. The things he's done. The things he chose not to do. With that in mind, there is, I think, one story worth telling about Dr. Beaumont, a story about another of his patients. I couldn't bring that patient here. He died in his brave service to his country in the Seminole Wars in the Florida territory, but I have his documents. The documents of one Edmund B. Griswold, lieutenant in the United States Army.”

  Deborah gripped her husband's arm. “This is obscene, William,” she said. “Come. Let's leave. Now.” She began to rise from her seat.

  “No,” he hissed as grabbed at her sleeve and yanked her back into her seat. “Sit down, woman. We must maintain our dignity.”

  In one hand, Geyer held several pages. He held his spectacles in the other. He began explaining the background of this document signed by President James Monroe. He recounted the methods Beaumont
used to diagnose the lieutenant as a malingerer and the result of the diagnosis on the lieutenant's career. The courtroom once again became noisy. Judge Lucas demanded order.

  “I'll not belabor these details. I'll let our president's words speak instead.”

  He put on his spectacles and held the pages before him. The court-room was still, save the sound of a barking dog that came in from the street.

  “The evidence before the court did not warrant the decision it rendered. The conviction rests on testimony from one Assistant Surgeon William Beaumont whose evidence is more an expression of his professional opinion than a statement of facts. The testimony of Assistant Surgeon Beaumont bears internal marks of excited feelings, impairing their credibility. Assistant Surgeon Beaumont is to be especially singled out for making an experiment upon his patient of more than doubtful propriety in the relations of a medical advisor to his patient. A medicine of violent operation, administered by a physician to a man whom he believes to be in full health, but who is taking his professional advice, is a very improper test of the sincerity of the patient's complaints, and the avowal of it as a transaction justifiable in itself discloses a mind warped by ill will, or insensitive to its own relative duties.”

  Several in the courtroom gasped. Geyer removed his spectacles. He lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose and slowly refolded the pages and slipped them into his coat pocket. When he spoke his voice was soft and it was gentle.

  “Mr. William Darnes is guilty. He is guilty of defending his reputation from the malicious attacks upon his name in each and every issue of Andrew Davis's venemous Missouri Argus. He is as guilty as the rest of us for cherishing the immortal part, his name and his reputation, as more priceless than any earthly treasure. But he is not guilty of the death of Mr. Davis. That event, some seven days after the clash on Market Street, is on the hands of the men who claimed to be his caring physicians. Defense rests.”

  The courtroom erupted. Judge Lucas slammed his mallet again and yet again. He demanded order, but order was not forthcoming. The bailiff and the clerks looked like spectators to a drunken brawl. Deborah wept. Her husband sat stock-still with his arms folded across his chest, staring forward.

  The jury deliberated just four hours. William Darnes was not guilty of the charge of the murder in either the first or second degrees of Andrew Davis. Judge Lucas fined the politician five hundred dollars and six months probation for manslaughter in the third degree. That evening the man and his supporters traveled in triumph to the Missouri statehouse.

  FORTY-SIX

  WITHIN A MONTH, A PAMPHLET reprinting Henry Geyer's summation was published and circulating as far as Boston and Philadelphia.

  Beaumont fumed and raged. His children fled from their father's glare. Neither Deborah nor Captain Hitchcock could console him. They hid the issues of the Missouri Republican wherein readers debated Dr. Beaumont's ethics.

  He took to his study, where he paced back and forth like a caged animal. His dog lay flat on the carpet, his chin upon his forelegs, his brown eyes following his master to and fro. The image of Henry Geyer was burned into his mind so that when he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, the man's round face, the sway of his back, the puff of his great chest, the ringing voice orating before all St. Louis, were all as vivid as they'd been that afternoon in court. Talking to himself, he quarreled with the image of Geyer.

  “Using my name like some pawn in a game of beggar's chess! Humiliating me before all of St. Louis! If dueling were not the sport of the lesser classes, I'd have that coward, that poltroon, at fifty paces with pistols.”

  In time, he decided that the clever lawyer was not the problem. The problem was Alexis. He needed the man.

  “You ungrateful man. I wish, wish, wish, yes sometimes I do wish I had never met you. And then I wish you were here. I need you. I loathe you. I pity you. I want you back. My patient, my subject, my servant, my covenant servant. My sergeant. You're a deserter too, are you not? Aye, you're a clever Indian. A runaway.

  “Fortune's wheel spun and spun again. If you had not stepped backward, if the gun had been slightly askew, why then we'd never have met. And if I had not come running, not defied the likes of Ramsay Crooks, you'd be a worm-eaten corpse.”

  He held his head in his hands. It ached such that it might burst.

  “Alexis, when I get you again into my keeping, I will control you as I please, retrieve a quarter of a century of my ignorance, imbecility and professional remissness. When they see you with me, they will see us whole and as we were. Doctor and his patient. If posthumous time should remember my name, historic truths will declare my fame. Fault me for my ambition? Then blame the eagle for flying, the lion for hunting, the salmon for swimming upriver.”

  For several minutes, he stood before his desk, then leaned above it, the better to discern his reflection on the surface of its high-polished veneer. But he was merely a spectral blur. His knees ached. His wrists were sore. His bowels sluggish. His manhood feeble. Life was ebbing from him like water from a leaking rain barrel. He dropped heavily into his chair.

  “I'm a toothless lion. I'm wasting my time, but I don't have any more time left. And how shall I be remembered? For the curio shop chronicle of experiments upon the man with the hole in his side? For what I did to the Frenchman? Or will I simply be forgotten?”

  He laughed. He wagged his head to and fro like some great beast shaking water from its ears. He reached into the desk drawer and pulled put a leather-bound book. It was the virtue diary he had kept in his first years on Mackinac Island. He opened its tattered cover to one of its finely ruled pages marked with his careful X's recording his transgressions upon that week's virtue. Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality and Industry. And so on unto the thirteenth virtue. Humility.

  “To imitate Socrates so as to be Humble,” he pronounced. “To drown mine ambition in hemlock. Is that what Mr. Franklin meant? To live one's life for death. But Mr. Franklin had fame. Has it still. He is. I am to be forgotten.”

  He put back the diary. He took up his pen and dipped it in its silver inkwell.

  Dear Alexis,

  Without reference to my past efforts and disappointments, without reference to expectation of ever obtaining your services again for the purpose of experiments, upon the proposals and conditions heretofore made and suggested, I now proffer to you in faith and sincerity, new, and I hope satisfactory, terms and conditions to ensure your prompt and faithful compliance with my most fervent desire to have you again with me. With me not only for my own individual gratification, and the benefits of medical science, but also for your own and your family's present good and future welfare.

  I propose the following—$500 to come to me without your family, for one year—$300 of this for your salary, and $200 for the support and contentment of your family to remain in Canada in the meantime—with the privilege of bringing them on here another year. I submit this, my final offer, out of the principles of Justice and Fairness.

  I can say no more, Alexis. This is my final letter—you know what I have done for you over many years—what I have been trying, and am still anxious and wishing to do with and for you. You know what efforts, anxieties, anticipations and disappointments I have suffered from your nonfulfillment of my expectations. Don't disappoint me more, nor forfeit the bounties and blessing reserved for you.

  Sincerely,

  William Beaumont, MD

  For two weeks, he kept this letter secure in his iron strongbox as he debated how best to deliver it to Alexis. He was done with the company. The mails were impersonal. He needed someone to persuade Alexis. One Saturday afternoon, as he was watching his son Israel and his friends swimming at Chouteau's Pond, he made his plan. Since the last summer, Israel had become a man with black fur at his groin and long thighs like butter churns, but the family's good fortune had softened him. The lad was care-free, with neither ambition nor industriousness, idle unto laziness. It was time for his only son to truly inherit the
Beaumont name.

  The following day, after church, he called the young man to his study. Israel gripped the very edge of the seat.

  “Bud, it's time now for you to begin to set out in the world. I did the same when I was your age, a little older in fact, but I was needed on the farm. More than any fortune I leave you, and I stand to leave you and your sisters a comfortable sum, I leave you my name, our name, the Beaumont name.”

  The boy nodded.

  “It's a responsibility I bear and that, in time, you to shall bear as well. This is a matter between fathers and sons. You know that book I wrote?”

  “Yes, of course, Papa.”

  “I need to finish it.”