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William Beaumont

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: William Beaumont
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(born Nov. 21, 1785, Lebanon, Conn., U.S. — died April 25, 1853, St. Louis, Mo.) U.S. surgeon. He served many years as an army surgeon. When treating a trapper whose abdomen had been perforated by a shotgun blast, Beaumont collected gastric juice for analysis and showed that it contained hydrochloric acid, which supported his belief that digestion was a chemical process. He also reported on the effects of different foods on the stomach and established alcohol as a cause of gastritis.

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Food and Nutrition: William Beaumont
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(1785-1853) American army surgeon; pioneer of gastric physiology as a result of caring for a soldier who had been shot in the stomach, leaving a permanent fistula through which secretion of gastric juice and digestion could be observed.

Dictionary of Dance: Cyril William Beaumont
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Beaumont, Cyril William (b London, 1 Nov. 1891, d London, 24 May 1976). British critic, writer, bookseller, and publisher. One of the most important dance historians of the 20th century. He wrote more than 40 books on ballet, including the mammoth Complete Book of Ballets, and translated many early writings on the subject by Noverre, P. Rameau, and Gautier. He also recorded and preserved the Cecchetti system of training, and founded the Cecchetti Society to further the master's teaching methods. He fell in love with ballet after seeing Pavlova perform in 1911 and the following year saw Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, an event which prompted him to devote himself to chronicling the achievements of the Diaghilev era. In 1910 he opened a dance bookshop in Charing Cross Road in London which became world famous, and he kept it open for the next 55 years until his retirement in 1965. He was honoured by the French, Italian, and British governments. Author of A Manual of the Theory and Practice of Classical Theatrical Dancing (with Idzikowski, 1922), A Bibliography of Dancing (1929), Michel Fokine and His Ballets (1935), The Complete Book of Ballets (1937), The Diaghilev Ballet in London (1940), Supplement to the Complete Book of Ballets (1942), The Ballet Called Giselle (1944), The Sadler's Wells Ballet (1946), Ballet Design: Past and Present (1946), Dancers Under My Lens (1949), The Ballet Called Swan Lake (1952), Ballets of Today (1954), Ballets Past and Present (1955), and A Bookseller at the Ballet, his 1975 autobiography. Légion d'honneur (1950). Chairman of the Cecchetti Society from 1922 to 1970. Editor of Dance Journal (1924-39); dance critic of the Sunday Times (1950-9).

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: William Beaumont
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Beaumont, William, 1785-1853, American physician, b. Lebanon, Conn. He was privately educated and was licensed (1812) to practice in Vermont. His Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion (1833; fac. ed. 1929, with biographical essay by Sir William Osler; repr. 1941) was an exhaustive account of a case famous in medical history. In 1822, while serving as army post surgeon on Mackinac Island, Beaumont treated Alexis St. Martin, a youth of 19 whose abdomen had been torn open by an accidental gunshot at close range. All efforts to close the wound failed, although St. Martin recovered his health and strength. Later, when he realized what a unique opportunity this was to study the digestive process, Beaumont, with the assent of his sometimes rebellious patient, began a series of experiments that completely revolutionized the knowledge of the subject. In all, about 238 experiments were reported, starting (1825) at Mackinac Island and continuing at intervals over a number of years at Plattsburgh, N.Y., Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien, Wis.), and Washington, D.C.

Bibliography

See J. S. Myer, Life and Letters of Dr. William Beaumont (1912, new ed. 1939).

Wikipedia: William Beaumont
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For the rugby player William "Bill" Blackledge Beaumont, see Bill Beaumont.
William Beaumont

William Beaumont
Born November 21, 1785
Lebanon, Connecticut
Died April 25, 1853
Nationality United States
Fields Medicine
Known for Research on digestion

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" following his research on human digestion.

Contents

Biography

Late life

William Beaumont was born to Samuel and Lucretia Abel Beaumont in Lebanon, Connecticut.[1] In 1811 William trained to become a doctor through an apprenticeship with Dr. Truman Powell in St. Albans, Vermont. From 1812 until 1815, Beaumont served as a surgeon's mate in the army during the War of 1812. After the war ended he started a private practice in Plattsburgh, New York, but by 1819 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 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.

Experiments with St. Martin

From Beaumont's Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion, 1833 (p. 27)

On June 6, 1822, an employee of the American Fur Company on Mackinac Island, named Alexis St. Martin, was accidentally shot in the stomach. Dr. Beaumont treated his wound, but expected St. Martin to die from his injuries.[2][3] Despite this dire prediction, St. Martin survived - but with a hole, or fistula, in his stomach that never fully healed. Unable to continue work for the American Fur Company, he was hired as a handyman by Dr. Beaumont.

By August 1825, Beaumont had been relocated to Fort Niagara in New York, and Alexis St. Martin had come with him. Beaumont recognized that he had in St. Martin the unique opportunity to observe digestive processes. Dr. Beaumont began to perform experiments on digestion using the stomach of St. Martin. Most of the experiments were conducted by tying a piece of food to a string and inserting it through the hole into St. Martin's stomach. Every few hours, Beaumont would remove the food and observe how well it had been digested. Beaumont also extracted a sample of gastric acid from St. Martin's stomach for analysis. In September, Alexis St. Martin left Dr. Beaumont and moved to Canada, leaving Beaumont to concentrate on his duties as an army surgeon. Beaumont also used samples of stomach acid taken out of St. Martin to "digest" bits of food in cups. This led to the important discovery that the stomach acid, not only the mashing and pounding and squeezing of the stomach, digests the food into nutrients the stomach can use; in other words, digestion was primarily a chemical process and not a mechanical one.

During 1826 and 1827, Dr. Beaumont was stationed at Fort Howard in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1828 he was transferred to St. Louis, Missouri. While en route to St. Louis, Beaumont was ordered to stop at Fort Crawford in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin to treat malaria. He would remain in Prairie du Chien for the next five years. While there, Beaumont arranged for Alexis St. Martin to come to serve as his handyman again. In early 1831, Dr. Beaumont conducted another set of experiments on St. Martin's stomach, ranging from the simple observation of normal digestion to the effects that temperature, exercise and even emotions have on the digestive process.

Publication and afterwards

Gravesite of William and Deborah Beaumont (Life and Letters of Dr. William Beaumont, p. 295)

Beaumont left the army in 1832 and moved to Washington, D.C. There he met St. Martin once again, and performed another set of experiments on how various foods were digested in the stomach. In 1833, Beaumont returned to Moscow where he wrote a book about his experiments on digestion titled Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. St. Martin returned to Canada during the spring of 1833, and would never see Dr. Beaumont again, although he corresponded with the Beaumont family; St. Martin died in 1880.

In 1834, Beaumont reenlisted and was stationed at St. Louis. He left the service in 1839, and maintained a private practice in St. Louis until his death in 1853. Beaumont is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery St. Louis, Missouri.[4]

Legacy

Several institutions are named for William Beaumont, including:

Selected writings

References

  1. ^ Myer, Jesse S. (editor) (1912). Life and Letters of Dr. William Beaumont. St. Louis: C. V. Mosby Company. http://books.google.com/books?id=wkcDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=beaumont+life+and+letters#PPR4,M2. 
  2. ^ Beaumont, William (1838). Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart. http://books.google.com/books?id=H6F4_9joRkgC&pg=PA1&dq=gastric+juice#PPR3,M2. 
  3. ^ Harré, R. (1981). Great Scientific Experiments. Phaidon (Oxford). pp. 39 – 47. ISBN 0-7148-2096-2. 
  4. ^ Myer, Jesse S. (editor) (1912). Life and Letters of Dr. William Beaumont. St. Louis: C. V. Mosby Company. http://books.google.com/books?id=wkcDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=beaumont+life+and+letters#PPR4,M2. 

Further reading

  • Beaumont, W. (June 1977). "Nutrition Classics. Experiments and observations on the gastric juice and the physiology of digestion. By William Beaumont. Plattsburgh. Printed by F. P. Allen. 1833". Nutr. Rev. (United States) 35 (6): 144–5. ISSN 0029-6643. PMID 327355. 
  • Cummiskey, R. D.; O'Leary J. P. (August 1996). "William Beaumont". The American surgeon (United States) 62 (8): 690–1. ISSN 0003-1348. PMID 8712571. 
  • Harré, R. (1981). Great Scientific Experiments. Phaidon (Oxford). p. 39. 
  • Nelson, Rodney B. (1990), Beaumont: America's First Physiologist, Geneva, Illinois: Grant House Press.
  • O'Leary, J. P. (January 1994). "The identification of the caustic agent in gastric juice". The American surgeon (United States) 60 (1): 79–80. ISSN 0003-1348. PMID 8273980. 
  • Schatzki, S. C. (June 1993). "Beaumont and St. Martin". AJR. American journal of roentgenology (United States) 160 (6): 1176. ISSN 0361-803X. PMID 8498211. 

External links


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