Saturday, May 5, 2018

Seeing Inside Is Gruesome But Enlightening

Been working a few political campaigns lately, mostly localized issues around housing and unions. It's interesting, actually being the guy in the proverbial smoke-filled back room, making the political deals away from the public eye. Weird life, you just never know where you're going to end up, or what you view as right and wrong the more you learn how the world actually works.

--
Born in 1785 in Lebanon, Connecticut, William Beaumont was the son of a thriving farmer and veteran of the Revolutionary War. After declining an offer by his father of a nearby farm, Beaumont left home in 1806 at age 22 with a horse and sleigh, a barrel of cider, and $100. He settled in Champlain, New York, near the Canadian border, and taught school for 3 years. In 1810, at age 25, Beaumont entered a preceptorship under Benjamin Chandler in St. Albans, Vermont, living in Chandler's home for 2 years as an apprentice. He learned medicine primarily through observation of patients rather than through study of books, and recorded cases and his thoughts in notebooks, a habit he continued throughout his life.



...He participated in the capture of York in 1813 and the Battle of Plattsburgh in 1814, and resigned when the Treaty of Ghent ended the war in 1815.
After 4 years of private practice in Plattsburgh, Beaumont reenlisted in the army in 1819 at age 35 and was ordered to Fort Michilimackinac in the Michigan territory. Built by the British in 1780 on an island, Fort Mackinac was adjacent to a village inhabited by about 500 French Canadians and Indians employed by the American Fur Company. In June and July, however, Mackinac swelled with 5000 traders bearing their winter catch.

...Beaumont was the only physician on the island in June 1822 when Alexis St. Martin, a 19-year-old French Canadian, was accidentally shot by a gun in the store of the American Fur Company. Beaumont's record of the event follows:
I was called to him immediately after the accident. Found a portion of the Lungs as large as a turkey's egg protruding through the external wound, lacerated and burnt, and below this another protrusion resembling a portion of the Stomach, what at first view I could not believe possible to be that organ in that situation with the subject surviving, but on closer examination I found it to be actually the Stomach, with a puncture in the protruding portion large enough to receive my fore-finger, and through which a portion of his food that he had taken for breakfast had come out and lodged among his apparel. In this dilemma I considered my attempt to save his life entirely useless. (Myers, 1912)
Source.
--
So he cleanses the wound as best he can, clips off a bit of a rib with his penknife to ease the lung back inside, then applies a poultice.
A day later, the voyageur is struggling for his life, pneumonia and fever have set in. Beaumont bleeds the voyageur, then administers a cathartic, which spills out the hole in his stomach. Since attempts to feed the patient have the same result, St. Martin is fed through anal injections for two weeks, until the wound is healed enough for the hole to be bandaged. At least the voyageur can eat.
By December, St. Martin is, miraculously, on the mend, with one exception. The hole in the stomach has not closed—and defies all Beaumont’s attempts to seal it. Instead, the tissue around the opening attaches itself to the tissue in St. Martin’s side, creating a gastric fistula, a permanent opening. A disturbing development for St. Martin, because unless the hole is covered, his last meal leaks out. But for Beaumont, the hole presents an opportunity for his curious medical mind: He can look through the shilling-sized cavity, into a living human stomach. Fascinated, Beaumont spoons in food, then siphons it out again. He attaches meat to a string, dangles it through the hole and pulls it out for observation.

Source.




2 comments:

  1. I imagine the body politic has ostomies all over the place.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's like anything, everybody thinks they are the good guy. Sorry it took me so long to reply, I'm not here much myself!

    ReplyDelete