William beaumont biography

A dramatic and fateful event took place in the American Fur Company’s retail store, located on Mackinac Island, on June 6, 1822. The accidental shot that was thought to have fatally wounded Alexis St. Martin there brought together an inquisitive doctor and a unique patient and made medical history.

St. Martin was the test subject for Dr. William Beaumont, Fort Mackinac’s doctor at the time (1820-25). When the wound healed in a unique way, forming a fistula that bonded the torso wall to the stomach, Beaumont started a serious of experiments on human digestion. The living, working stomach was accessible to the doctor and he proceeded to test how food digested through observations, lowering foods into the stomach, and testing the gastric juices in vials outside of the stomach. Almost 250 experiments were conducted starting at Fort Mackinac and continuing in Wisconsin, Washington, D.C., and New York.

The culmination of experiments on St. Martin was the book Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. What Beaumont concluded in his 1833 book was digestion in the stomach was a chemical process using gastric juice as one of the agents, it used the temperature and motion to help in the process, and different foods digested differently and in different timing, among many other things.

The scientific impact of Beaumont’s book was great everywhere, but especially in Europe. Doctors were initially skeptical of the findings, soon they were to build on the clarifications the book gave them in the study of digestion. Beaumont, whose training included just over a year of medical school and two years of apprenticeship, became celebrated around the world and is still held in high esteem today as one of the first American doctors to have a significant impact on medical research.

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Surgeon and Physician

William Beaumont | Wisconsin Historical Society

William Beaumont was a physician known for his experiments on digestion, conducted upon a patient with an open abdominal wound. After 1825, Beaumont was an army surgeon at Mackinac, Plattsburgh, NY, and Fort Crawford, WI. 

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Early SLMMS president also was outspoken critic of false expert witness testimony.

To commemorate the 175th anniversary of the St. Louis Metropolitan Medical Society, we remember the world’s first great experimental gastroenterologist, Dr. William Beaumont. Most physicians are unaware that after his groundbreaking experiments on digestion when he was an army surgeon in Michigan, Beaumont moved to St. Louis where he had a successful medical and surgical practice and was elected president of the St. Louis Medical Society.

Beaumont was born in 1785 in Connecticut. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and other founding fathers of our country were still alive when he started medical practice, which was quite primitive at that time. As was often the custom of the day, his entire training consisted of a two-year apprenticeship to a practicing physician. He had no formal training in chemistry, physics or science, which makes his later accomplishments all the more remarkable.

Beaumont became an army surgeon. His future fame rested on a chance medical encounter with Alexis St. Martin, an illiterate worker who was accidentally shot in the chest by a musket. Beaumont attended to the patient within a half hour of the injury. St. Martin’s left lung and stomach had prolapsed into the wound. The stomach had been perforated by a spicule of rib. Beaumont gave a fatal prognosis but nevertheless did everything possible to save his patient’s life, dressing the wound on a daily basis. To his astonishment, St. Martin survived. His lung sloughed. He developed a gastric fistula, which Beaumont was unable to close. The fistula was large enough for Beaumont to insert his entire forefinger into St. Martin’s stomach. Food and drink constantly extruded unless prevented by a compress and bandage. The fistula persisted until St. Martin’s death at age 86.

The most amazing thing about Beaumont’s experiments on S

American physician (1785–1853)

For other people named William Beaumont, see William Beaumont (disambiguation).

William Beaumont (November 21, 1785 – April 25, 1853) was a surgeon in the U.S. Army who became known as the "Father of Gastric Physiology" for his research on human digestion on Alexis St. Martin.

Early life

William Beaumont was born to Samuel Beaumont and Lucretia Abel in Lebanon, Connecticut; his father was a farmer. He left his home after he turned twenty-one, moved to Champlain, New York and obtained a teaching job. In 1810 he relocated to St. Albans, Vermont, where he trained to become a physician through an apprenticeship with Dr. Truman Powell. In June 1812, the Third Medical Society of the State of Vermont in Burlington examined his knowledge "on the anatomy of the human body, and the theory and practice of physic and surgery" and recommended him as "judicious and safe practitioner in the different avocations of the medical profession."

From 1812 until 1815, Beaumont served as an assistant surgeon in the Army during the War of 1812, participating in the Battle of Plattsburgh. After the war ended, he started a private practice in Plattsburgh, New York, but by 1820, Beaumont had rejoined the Army as a surgeon. He was assigned a location at Fort Mackinac. Beaumont took a leave in 1821 and married Deborah "Debby" Green Platt in Plattsburgh before returning to his post. Deborah was divorced from Nathaniel Platt, whose uncle Zephaniah Platt founded Plattsburgh after the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Her father, Israel Green, was a third cousin of General Nathanael Greene.

Experiments with St. Martin

On June 6, 1822, an employee of the American Fur Company on Mackinac Island named Alexis St. Martin was accidentally shot in the stomach at close range by the discharge of a shotgun loaded with buckshot that injured his ribs and his stom