The Strange Case of Alexis St. MartinOn June 6th, 1822 a fur trader and woodsman named Alexis St. Ma

The Strange Case of Alexis St. MartinOn June 6th, 1822 a fur trader and woodsman named Alexis St. Martin was trapping on Mackinac Island, Michigan when he sustained an accidental gunshot wound to the stomach from a musket.  He was treated by an army surgeon named Dr. William Beaumont and recovered quickly.  However the wound healed in such a  way that a permanent fisula (hole) formed into his stomach.  For St. Martin this was quite the misfortune, for Dr. Beaumont it was quite the opportunity.  Dr. Beaumont hired St. Martin as his personal servent, not because he needed a servent, but because he wanted to experiment on St. Martin.  At the time little was known about digestion and for Dr. Beaumont this was an opportunity to secure fame as a pioneering scientist.  Between 1822 and 1833, Dr. Beaumont conducted various expirements on St. Martin, extracting samples of gastric juices for analysis, digesting different foods and materials, and closely observing the digestion process through St. Martin’s stomach hole.  Through the fistula, Dr. Beaumont could literally watch food digest, and he carefully noted the length of time for different foods to digest.  Often, he would take a piece of food attached to a string and insert it into the stomach, pulling it out hour by hour to examine the effects of the digestion process.  He would also take samples of St. Martin’s stomach acid and digest pieces of food in a cup.In the meantime St. Martin was beginning to become agitated with Dr. Beaumont’s experiments, wanting to move on in life and probably feeling a bit like a guinea pig.  Some of the experiments were painful and distressing.  At one point St. Martin ran away to Canada, but was literally hunted down and returned to Dr. Beaumont because he had signed a contract to be the doctor’s servant.  St. Martin was even forced to move to Fort Niagara in New York when Dr. Beaumont relocated there. Finally St. Martin’s contract with Dr. Beaumont expired in 1833, and the two parted ways.  Dr. Beaumont  published the results of his experiment with Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice, and the Physiology of Digestion.  St. Martin moved back to his home in Quebec.  Dr. Beaumont continually tried to convince St. Martin to return and continue the experiments, but St. Martin refused.  Alexis St. Martin died in 1880 at the age of 88, having never been disabled by his wound.  Dr. Beaumont died in 1853 after slipping on ice covered steps. -- source link

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