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Originally Posted by dinkydogs
Actually, this occurred on Mackinac Island, Michigan in 1822. The man was Alexis St. Martin, a trapper. The doctor was William Beaumont and there is a well known hospital in Michigan named after him, Beaumont Hospital.
Here is a little excerpt from an article........
It was a miracle that Alexis St. Martin survived. A gunshot at close range had torn a gaping hole in his abdomen. No one believed that he could possibly live. Dr. William Beaumont applied a carbonated, fermenting poultice of flour, hot water, charcoal, and yeast to the wound and did what else he could to make the patient comfortable in his last hours. The doctor was as surprised as anyone when Alexis lived through the first night.
The next day, the seriously wounded man was moved from the trading post at Mackinac Island to the small, one-room hospital where Dr. Beaumont treated his patients. There began one of medical history's strangest partnerships.
Dr. Beaumont, a young army surgeon with a keen and inquiring mind, was stationed at Mackinac Island. Alexis was a Canadian woodsman. The accident occurred in June of 1822, when trappers had returned to the outpost to trade the skins they had taken the previous winter. Like the others, Alexis planned to use the money he got for the skins to buy food for his long stint in the wilderness the following winter. But destiny had other plans. While at the outpost, he was accidentally shot in the stomach.
For weeks, Alexis lay near death while the skillful surgeon carefully nursed him. Bits of shot, scraps of cloth, and fragments of shattered bone were painstakingly removed from the wound each day. Because the gun blast had penetrated the stomach lining, the wound was bandaged securely to prevent the stomach's contents from running out. After several months, the doctor noticed a curious phenomenon--the flesh around the wound had begun to look healthy again, but nature was making no attempt to close the hole. It was healing open. Alexis would have a permanent hole in his stomach! In fact, the hole was large enough that the doctor could look through it and almost see digestion taking place.
Doctors of that day had many different views of what took place during the process of digestion. Most of them were wrong. Now Dr. Beaumont had an opportunity to solve the mystery. With the reluctant cooperation of his hapless patient, he began the first of many experiments to learn the secrets of the digestive process.
Small chunks of food tied with lengths of silk thread were suspended into the cavity, then withdrawn at carefully timed intervals for observation. Flesh of various kinds was tested to determine the length of time it took to digest each one. Every food found in the frontier post was tested. Dr. Beaumont found that meat and cereals were easier to digest than vegetables. Using a siphon, the doctor would at times draw out some of the gastric juice. This was kept at body temperature in vials. Bits of food were placed in these vials, then watched carefully to see what changes took place.
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