Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/106

BEAUMONT to the president is a model (General order No. 9 of February 18, 1826). "Whether the plan adopted be justifiable or not I leave to medical men and candid judges to decide. It had the intended effect of returning Lieut. Griswold to his duty without prejudice to his health. Neither is it of very great moment to me whether a successful experiment be of more or less doubtful propriety, that speedily returns a soldier from a sick report to effective service of the government, be he private, non-commissioned or commissioned officer; neither do I think it of very great consequence whether it be done secundum artem, secundum naturcm or terrorem, provided it be well done."

In May, 1826, Beaumont was transferred to Fort Howard on Green Bay, and in 1828 to Fort Crawford, on the upper Mississippi. After nearly two years of constant search, Beaumont finally found St. Martin in lower Canada, two thousand miles from Fort Crawford. He had married, was the father of two children and had supported himself by service as a voyageur. At great expense Beaumont secured his return and continued the experiments on him from August, 1829, to 1831, when he was allowed to take his family and return home. St. Martin's condition may be inferred when it is considered that this journey was made in an open canoe and traversed the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio, up the Ohio, across the (now) state of Ohio, down Lakes Erie and Ontario and the River St. Lawrence, the trip taking six weeks. In August, 1832, Beaumont was granted leave of absence and met St. Martin at Plattsburg, New York. From November, 1832, to March, 1834, they were in Washington conducting experiments. In the fall of 1833 was issued the first edition of "Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion." In all there were about two hundred and forty experiments, besides the microscopic examinations and observations. Early in 1834 he was ordered to Jefferson Barracks, a military post now fourteen miles below St. Louis, Missouri. Scarcely had he started for this new post when Lewis Cass, the secretary of war, received through Edward Everett, a petition signed by two hundred members of Congress, asking that Beaumont and St. Martin be sent to Boston, for study by Dr. Charles Jackson. The secretary of war replied that under existing arrangements it was impossible for Dr. Beaumont to visit Boston. Mr. Everett now sought to have Congress appropriate $10,000 to send Beaumont and St. Martin to Europe for study by the best physiologists and chemists of human gastric digestion. The appropriation failed. On July 1, Dr. Beaumont reached Jefferson Barracks, but one month later he was sent to Fort Crawford. In 1835 he was made purveyor of medical supplies for the western district and surgeon to the St. Louis Arsenal. The light duties of these positions permitted him to engage in private practice in which he promptly took a conspicuous position. In 1839 he was ordered to proceed at once to Florida for duty. This order being maintained in spite of his protests, he resigned and continued practice in St. Louis. During the cholera epidemic of 1849, though sixty-four years old, Dr. Beaumont labored day and night in caring for the sick. In 1844, in conjunction with Dr. S. W. Adreon, he was sued for $10,000 damages by a Mrs. Mary Dugan. The claim was that the doctors had treated an inguinal hernia as an appendicitis. The verdict was for the defendants, though a pamphlet war lasted many months with great virulence.

Of Beaumont's apt perception of strangers, Dr. Reyburn says: "You might introduce him to twenty strangers daily, and he would give an accurate estimate of each; his peculiar traits, disposition, etc., and not a few would receive some fitting sobriquet." His daughter, Mrs. Keim, says he once cured a hypochondriacal army officer by horsewhipping him. A wealthy, domineering man, the despair of many doctors, sought Beaumont's aid. He hesitated, but finally yielded to importunity on condition that what he prescribed would be done. His prescription was a large supply of bread pills and a trip to the Pacific coast—a cure resulted. Among his warm friends was Gen. Robert E. Lee, who from the age of sixteen was quite deaf, due to standing nearer a fourth-of-July cannon than any other boy of his set, on challenge. Not the least of Beaumont's trials with St. Martin was the settling of his fights with the teasing crowds who called him "the man with a lid on his stomach." Later St. Martin separated himself from Beaumont and became debauched and unreliable. He would promise to return for experimentation and on the receipt of money for his expenses would spend it on whiskey, the only article that he always insisted on taking by the natural channel.

It is difficult to realize the dense ignorance of the medical profession of stomach digestion in 1832, the date of Beaumont's publication. Dunglison's "Human Physiology" quotes five theories: concoction, putrefaction, trituration, fermentation and maceration. He also