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In eighteen twenty two, a musket blast tore open Alexis
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Saint Martin's stomach, and he survived. The wound healed into
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a doorway through his side. Doctor William Beaumont used it
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to observe digestion in a living man under a contract
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requiring Saint Martin to obey, suffer, and comply. Was this
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life saving medical research or something far darker?
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What you were about to pet you ispur to be
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based on witness accounts, testimonies, and public record, this is
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terrifying and treat.
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The The grave was reportedly eight feet deep. That detail
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comes not from a burial register or an eye witness diary,
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but from a medical history published years later. Its author
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said a Canadian judge had passed a long information from
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the parish priest who attended Alexis Saint Martin's burial in
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June of eighteen eighty. According to that chain of reporting,
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Saint Martin's family refused every request for an autopsy. They
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kept his body at home through a spell of hot
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weather until decomposition had advanced so far that no doctor
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could make useful work of it. Then they buried him
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unusually deep, hoping to prevent anyone from taking him back out,
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and they had real reason to worry. For more than
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half a century, physicians had wanted what was inside Alex
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Saint Martin, not merely his remains, not merely his medical history,
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his stomach. It had been examined while he worked, measured
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while he rested, fed through an opening in his side,
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drained through tubes, touched by instruments, offered to audiences of
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doctors bound to an employment agreement that required him to submit, travel, obey,
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and suffer. The man who first gained that access was
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William Beaumont, an army surgeon who had once performed something
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close to a miracle. He saved Saint Martin after a
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gunshot tore through his ribs, lung, diaphragm, and stomach. Then
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the wound refused to close. Medicine saw an impossible window
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into the living human body. Beaumont saw the opportunity of
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a lifetime, and Saint Martin spent the next several decades
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trying to decide when that opportunity belonged to him and
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when it didn't. And we're telling that story here tonight.
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So make sure you're subscribed on your favorite podcast app
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for a brand new, terrifying and true every single Monday
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in eighteen twenty two. Mackinac Island was a hinge in
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the North American Fur Trade Company. Stores, warehouses, and docks
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connected the Great Lakes to routes stretching deep into the continent.
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Each season brought traders, laborers, and voyagers, the men who
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paddled heavily loaded canoes, carried cargo over portages, and made
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a living through punishing physical labor. Alexis Saint Martin was
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one of those young voyagers. He was French Canadian, employed
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by the American Fur Company and described in the earliest
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medical record as strong and healthy. Historical accounts disagree about
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his exact age, so the safest picture is simply a
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young workingman whose body was essential to his livelihood. Voyager
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work also meant contracts, advances, and dependents on company networks,
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but it demanded endurance and skill. Saint Martin was not
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drifting through Mackinac as an anonymous patient waiting for history
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to happened to him. He had a trade, a route
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through the world, and the physical capacity to earn his
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place in it. The gunshot threatened all three on June sixth,
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eighteen twenty two, an accidental musket discharge changed that body forever.
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The exact mechanics of the accident were not preserved, but
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what is documented is the distance. Saint Martin was no
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more than a yard from the puzzle. Powder and duck
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shot struck his left side. The blast fractured ribs, damaged
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the lower portion of his left lung, tore the diaphragm,
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and opened the stomach. William Beaumont reached him within roughly
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half an hour. Beaumont was the army surgeon stationed at
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Fort Mackinac, and, by contemporary accounts, the only physician immediately
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available on the island. He found a wound so destructive
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that part of the lung and part of the stomach
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protruded through the side. Food from Saint Martin's breakfast was
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escaping through an opening large enough to admit a finger.
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Beaumont later admitted that trying to save him seemed nearly useless,
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but try he did. He cleaned the wound, remove debris,
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returned injured tissue as far as possible, and dressed the
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enormous opening. The treatment was nineteenth century medicine, complete with
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methods that now appear alarming, including blood letting, yet dismissing
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the entire effort as primitive would miss what happened next.
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Beaumont stayed with the case, adapted as the injury changed,
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and kept Saint Martin alive through one crisis after another.
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The first days were brutal. Fever rose, breathing became difficult,
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damaged tissue died and separated. Medicine swallowed by mouth simply
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ran back out through the hole. For seventeen days, everything
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entering the stomach through the esophagus is scared paped through
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the wound. Beaumont sustained Saint Martin with nutritive enemas until dressings, compresses,
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and adhesive straps could hold food inside long enough for
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the body to use it. That was not a dramatic
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cure so much as a siege measured in retained meals,
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controlled leakage, and yet another day survived. Something stranger was
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happening beneath the dressings. As the wound healed, the damaged
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stomach attached itself to the tissues of the chest wall.
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That adhesion helped prevent stomach contents from spilling into the
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abdominal cavity, where infection would likely have been fatal. The
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body was not restoring its old anatomy, it was building
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a new arrangement around the injury. Saint Martin slowly improved
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by the following spring. He could walk and perform light work.
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Beaumont continued removing damaged bone and cartilage, dressing the wound,
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and trying to reduce the opening. He drew edges together
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with adhesive straps and spent eight to ten months attempting
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to make the orifice close, but it wouldn't. Months of
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recovery also changed the relationship between doctor and patient. Saint
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Martin had little money and no easy way to support
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himself while disabled. Beaumont brought him into his own household,
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fed and clothed him, and eventually employed him. That generosity
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was real was the dependence it created. Beaumont was becoming physician, provider,
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and employer, all at the same time. Three kinds of
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authority gathered in one man. The remaining option, as Beaumont
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described it, was to cut the healed edges and bring
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them together with sutures. Saint Martin refused that operation, and
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that refusal is pretty poignant. Long before later contracts and
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arguments and departures here is Saint Martin making a consequential
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decision about his own body. The opening remained not because
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Beaumont secretly preserved it for science, but because months of
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treatment had failed and the patient declined the final surgical attempt,
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likely out of sheer exhaustion mental and physical. By June
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of eighteen twenty three, most of the injury had healed.
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The aperture in the stomach and side remained. Food and
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drink could still leak unless held by a compress and
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a bandage. The exposed margin was sensitive, and Beaumont himself
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recorded that instruments or gastric fluid touching it could cause
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pain and distress. Then, during the winter of eighteen twenty
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three and eighteen twenty four, a fold of stomach tissue
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gradually formed at the opening. It functioned like a natural
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valve when the stomach was full. The fold blocked the
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contents from escaping. Press it inward, however, and the opening
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gave direct access to the organ. By the spring of
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eighteen twenty four, Saint Martin had regained his health and
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his strength. He was not a dying patient frozen in
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a hospital bed. He could work, travel, and eat normally,
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but beneath his clothing was a permanent gastric fistula, an
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opening through the chest wall and into the living stomach,
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protected by a valve that the body had improvised for itself.
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To Saint Martin, it was the lasting consequence of the
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day a musket went off beside him. To Beaumont, it
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was becoming something else entirely. For centuries, physicians had argued
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about digestion by studying animals, corpses, vomit, and theory. Now
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an army surgeon could life lift a fold of tissue
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and look directly inside a living human stomach. The wound
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had stopped being only a wound. It had become a
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door or a window, depending on how you look at it.
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The first experiments began in eighteen twenty five. Beaumont started
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with an idea so simple it almost disguises the strangeness.
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He tied pieces of food to silk thread, pushed them
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through the opening in Saint Martin's side, and left the
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string hanging outside. At timed intervals, he pulled the samples
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back out to see how they had changed. One early
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trial included beef, pork, bread, and cabbage. Saint Martin went
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about his household employment. While the food remained suspended inside him,
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Beaumont removed the pieces, examined them, then returned them to
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the stomach. When Saint Martin reported pain and uneasiness, Beaumont
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removed the samples again. Then he put them back. Only
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after Saint Martin's distress became considerable, accompanied by weakness, lassitude,
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and pain in his head, did Beaumont withdraw the string
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and stop returning the food. This is one reason the
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original record is more disturbing than an embellished version could be.
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We don't need invented screams of pain or sadistic dialogue.
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Lmont documented the discomfort himself. He also documented the decision
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to continue before finally stopping. The procedures grew more varied.
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These were not merely brief demonstrations. On experimental days, Saint
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Martin's meals, fasting, movement, and posture could become part of
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the design. He might eat a measured breakfast, walk a
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prescribed distance, lie down for an examination, wait while Beaumont
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checked the opening, then repeat the process by the clock.
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The notes follow temperature, pulse, and digestion with impressive discipline.
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They also show how easily a working man's entire day
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could be converted into laboratory equipment. Small bags made of
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thin fabric held measured portions of food. Tubes carried fluid
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out of the stomach. Thermometers went in to measure internal temperature.
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A long glass instrument could be drawn deeper by the
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stomach's own contractions, giving Beaumont evidence of muscular motion, but
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sometimes producing cramps, soreness, or severe distress. In order to
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collect gastric juice, Beaumont inserted a narrow, flexible tube several
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inches into the stomach, moving it against the lining, which
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stimulated the flow. He might obtain only a small quantity
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before Saint Martin felt a sinking sensation, vertigo, or faintness,
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strong enough to end the procedure. At other times, an
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examination passed with life little difficulty. The ethical problem is
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not that every observation was agony. It's that bodily access
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could be resumed whenever Beaumont judged the next measurement worth taking.
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And then there's the tongue. In his book, Beaumont discusses
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testing whether the stomach lining itself was acidic. The sentence
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says that this was done by quote applying the tongue
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to the exposed mucus coat. The grammar never clearly identifies
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whose tongue touched whose stomach. Perhaps Beaumont meant his own,
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perhaps Saint Martin's. The text doesn't settle it, but it
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seems kind of obvious. Medical history occasionally hands us a
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mystery that is both academically important and almost impossible to
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discuss over a meal. But the larger experiment was serious.
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Before Beaumont, digestion was hidden behind layers of living tissue.
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Researchers could open dead bodies, operate on animals, examine material
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expelled from the stomach, or argue from a point of chemistry.
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None of those methods showed repeatedly and in real time,
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what an ordinary meal did inside a living human being.
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Through Saint Martin's fistula, Beaumont could compare the same food
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in two places, one portion inside the stomach, another in
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a vial of extracted gastric juice kept warm. He could
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watch the stomach move, He could record temperature. He could
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see when clear fluid appeared, how food softened, how the
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contents were churned, and how illness changed the appearance of
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the lining. The results pushed digestion away from old ideas
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of simple grinding, fermentation, or internal cooking. Food was not
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merely crushed into submission. Gastric juice acted as a chemical
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solvent while the muscular stomach mixed and moved the meal.
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Beaumont did not discover hydrochloric acid. The chemist William Prout
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had identified it in gastric fluid before Beaumont's book appeared.
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What Beaumont could do was confirm and characterize the chemistry
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of digestion in a living human subject, then connect that
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chemistry to motion, temperature, diet, and health. He also observed
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that the stomach did not operate like an isolated pot.
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Exercise changed measurements. Illness delayed digestion, anger, fear, and agitation
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could reduce secretion and disturb the entire process. Those observations
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were not proof that Beaumont deliberately frightened or enraged Saint Martin.
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They were observations made when emotional disturbance occurred. The window
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revealed a living system responding to the whole person, Yet
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the research notes often narrowed that person to what could
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be measured through the opening food in sample out, temperature, time, pain,
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continue the procedures were intermittent, not one unbroken decade of experimentation,
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and not every observation caused serious suffering. Saint Martin sometimes cooperated,
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sometimes negotiated terms, and sometimes permitted examinations by other physicians
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later in life, but the record also shows that his
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cooperation had limits. In August of eighteen twenty five, after
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traveling with Beaumont from Fort Mackinac to New York, Saint
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Martin went home to Canada. Beaumont's published account says he
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left without obtaining my consent. That sentence is revealing because
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Saint Martin was not a soldier deserting Beaumont's command at
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that moment, nor a specimen escaping a locked cabinet. He
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was a man returning to his own country. Yet Beaumont
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wrote as though permission to leave belonged to the doctor.
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Unable to locate him, Beaumont said he had given Saint
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Martin up as a quote lost subject, not a lost
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patient or a lost employee, but a lost subject. By then,
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the opening in Saint Martin's side had shown Beaumont how
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digestion worked. Saint Martin's departure showed what Beaumont believed the
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opening had given him. Saint Martin was not lost. He
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was in Canada, rebuilding a life outside of Beaumont's reach.
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He returned to voyager work. He married Marie Jolie. They
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had children. The fistula had not made him incapable of labor, family,
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or decision. It remained a disability he had to manage,
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and it made his body unusually valuable to a physician
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hundreds of miles away. Beaumont wanted that body back within reach.
237
00:23:10.799 --> 00:23:14.839
He used contacts in the American Fur Company, the same
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00:23:14.920 --> 00:23:20.200
commercial network that hired and moved voyagers, to locate Saint Martin,
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00:23:20.799 --> 00:23:26.960
negotiate an engagement and transport him west. In August of
240
00:23:27.000 --> 00:23:32.039
eighteen twenty nine, Saint Martin arrived at Fort Crawford, near
241
00:23:32.119 --> 00:23:37.640
Prairie Duchin, with Marie and two children. The family's presence
242
00:23:37.839 --> 00:23:43.000
is interesting. Saint Martin was not simply returning as a
243
00:23:43.119 --> 00:23:48.920
solitary medical subject. He was making an employment decision tied
244
00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:54.039
to the survival and movement of a household. He worked
245
00:23:54.039 --> 00:23:59.839
for Beaumont as what the doctor called a quote common servant,
246
00:24:00.039 --> 00:24:06.559
shopping wood, carrying burdens, and performing other labor. Marie washed
247
00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:11.039
clothing for the Beaumont household. Years later, Saint Martin would
248
00:24:11.119 --> 00:24:14.559
argue that she was still owed money for that work.
249
00:24:15.720 --> 00:24:20.039
That later dispute is more than a household footnote. It
250
00:24:20.160 --> 00:24:24.960
shows Saint Martin and Marie understanding themselves as workers who
251
00:24:25.039 --> 00:24:30.960
could tally labor, demand payment, and place conditions on any return,
252
00:24:31.599 --> 00:24:37.960
not simply as grateful dependence without claims. The experiments resumed
253
00:24:38.039 --> 00:24:44.759
alongside the domestic service. That arrangement blurred every line available.
254
00:24:45.400 --> 00:24:49.559
Beaumont was the physician who had saved Saint Martin, the
255
00:24:49.599 --> 00:24:54.599
employer paying him, the provider housing his family, and the
256
00:24:54.799 --> 00:25:00.319
army officer directing life around the post. Saint Martin could
257
00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:04.960
bargain with him, but he bargained from inside a relationship
258
00:25:05.359 --> 00:25:12.799
dense with gratitude, poverty, disability, and authority. In eighteen thirty one,
259
00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:18.039
Saint Martin returned to Canada again. Then in eighteen thirty two,
260
00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:24.240
another agreement brought him back to Beaumont. This one survives.
261
00:25:25.160 --> 00:25:28.759
It's not a modern consent form. It's a one year
262
00:25:28.920 --> 00:25:34.759
labor contract written in the language of service, duty and obedience.
263
00:25:35.400 --> 00:25:41.119
It identifies Saint Martin as Beaumont's quote covenant servant. It
264
00:25:41.240 --> 00:25:46.000
requires him to travel wherever Beaumont goes, perform work for
265
00:25:46.079 --> 00:25:52.480
Beaumont's benefit, and submit to physiological or medical experiments through
266
00:25:52.519 --> 00:26:02.119
the opening in his side. In exchange, Beaumont promised housing, food, drink, water, brushing, lodging, clothing,
267
00:26:02.599 --> 00:26:08.319
medical care, and one hundred fifty dollars about three thousand,
268
00:26:08.480 --> 00:26:13.599
six hundred dollars in today's money. Then comes the clause
269
00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:19.559
that gives this entire episode its title. Saint Martin was
270
00:26:19.599 --> 00:26:26.480
required to quote, obey, suffer and comply with what the
271
00:26:26.519 --> 00:26:33.119
agreement called all reasonable and proper orders or experiments concerning
272
00:26:33.519 --> 00:26:42.599
his stomach. Obey, suffer, comply. The legal phrasing may have
273
00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:48.039
sounded ordinary to a nineteenth century clerk. In the context
274
00:26:48.079 --> 00:26:52.519
of a human body, it sounds like the contract accidentally
275
00:26:53.119 --> 00:26:58.400
told the truth. The words reasonable and proper did not
276
00:26:58.599 --> 00:27:04.279
place a limit on paper. But Beaumont was the physician, employer,
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00:27:04.440 --> 00:27:10.000
and investigator. He designed the procedures, He judged their value,
278
00:27:10.119 --> 00:27:16.200
He recorded the discomfort. He decided when considerable distress was
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00:27:16.359 --> 00:27:23.240
enough to stop. Saint Martin signed with an X. That
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00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:28.519
mark raises serious questions, but it doesn't answer them all
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00:27:28.559 --> 00:27:33.599
on its own. Saint Martin's first language was French, while
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00:27:33.640 --> 00:27:37.960
the surviving agreement is in English. We can't assume that
283
00:27:38.079 --> 00:27:43.519
he read every clause, but we also can't assume the
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00:27:43.559 --> 00:27:50.559
acts proves he understood nothing. Voyager contracts commonly anticipated workers
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00:27:50.680 --> 00:27:56.720
making a mark, and Saint Martin had experienced negotiating employment.
286
00:27:57.599 --> 00:28:02.319
What the document proves is more narrow and more disturbing.
287
00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:07.279
Access to his stomach was bundled into the same bargain
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00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:15.279
as wages, clothing meals, travel, and shelter. A popular retelling
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00:28:15.359 --> 00:28:20.559
claims Beaumont deliberately kept the fistula open so he could experiment.
290
00:28:21.240 --> 00:28:26.559
The surviving medical account doesn't support that. Beaumont spent eight
291
00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:29.920
to ten months trying to close it with dressings and
292
00:28:30.319 --> 00:28:35.240
adhesive methods. He believed the remaining option required cutting the
293
00:28:35.279 --> 00:28:39.119
heeled edges and suturing them together, which, as we mentioned,
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00:28:39.240 --> 00:28:45.680
Saint Martin refused. That refusal should not be erased merely
295
00:28:45.759 --> 00:28:51.160
to make Beaumont more villainous. The ethical case is still
296
00:28:51.200 --> 00:28:56.279
pretty strong without needing to invent one. The contract should
297
00:28:56.279 --> 00:29:01.400
also not be mistaken for proof that every experiment happened
298
00:29:01.440 --> 00:29:07.039
over an explicit refusal. Saint Martin returned more than once
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00:29:07.640 --> 00:29:13.720
he accepted payment, he participated. He sometimes allowed examinations later
300
00:29:14.319 --> 00:29:19.480
by other physicians. But agreement under one set of conditions
301
00:29:19.559 --> 00:29:24.519
is not permanent ownership of a person's body. A wage
302
00:29:24.599 --> 00:29:30.480
contract can be signed and still be coercively Unequal consent
303
00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:34.559
can exist in some moments and be compromised in others.
304
00:29:35.240 --> 00:29:40.960
It can be negotiated withdrawn, pressured, and renewed. Beaumont's own
305
00:29:41.119 --> 00:29:47.559
language exposes that instability. After one departure, he acknowledged privately
306
00:29:47.680 --> 00:29:52.640
that Saint Martin was quote unwilling to be experimented upon
307
00:29:53.559 --> 00:29:59.680
while minimizing the pain involved. Yet Beaumont continued to describe
308
00:29:59.720 --> 00:30:06.880
the problem as recovering possession, control, or service. This was
309
00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:13.920
not a kidnapping, slavery, or literal imprisonment. Saint Martin repeatedly
310
00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:19.839
left and returned to Canada, negotiated money, refused surgery, and
311
00:30:20.119 --> 00:30:26.039
eventually declined to come back. Those facts are essential when
312
00:30:26.119 --> 00:30:31.759
talking about his agency. They do not make the relationship equal. However,
313
00:30:32.400 --> 00:30:38.359
Beaumont's medical authority, household power, military standing, and control of
314
00:30:38.400 --> 00:30:44.880
income gave his requests exceptional weight. The accurate description is
315
00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:53.400
not captivity, Its more consent by dependence and paternalism. During
316
00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:56.920
the winter of eighteen thirty two and eighteen thirty three,
317
00:30:57.559 --> 00:31:04.559
Beaumont's observations became intents. For months, he examined Saint Martin
318
00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:12.559
almost daily and sometimes at short intervals. Prescribed meals, extracted fluids,
319
00:31:12.599 --> 00:31:18.920
introduced tubes, measured temperature, and watched digestion proceed The work
320
00:31:18.960 --> 00:31:22.920
would help change physiology. It would also leave behind a
321
00:31:22.960 --> 00:31:27.759
document in which one man's bodily submission was written as
322
00:31:28.200 --> 00:31:33.440
another man's employment benefit. The window into Saint Martin's stomach
323
00:31:34.079 --> 00:31:38.519
was no longer merely an accident of healing. It was
324
00:31:38.559 --> 00:31:50.839
a condition of service. In eighteen thirty three, Beaumont published
325
00:31:50.839 --> 00:31:55.160
the work that made his name. The book gathered years
326
00:31:55.200 --> 00:32:01.200
of uninterrupted experiments and observations into a sustained account of
327
00:32:01.279 --> 00:32:06.240
the living human stomach. The conventional historical count is about
328
00:32:06.640 --> 00:32:11.119
two hundred and thirty eight. Some later summaries count the
329
00:32:11.160 --> 00:32:16.400
material differently, but the scale is clear. This was not
330
00:32:16.759 --> 00:32:22.640
a single demonstration. It was a research program built around
331
00:32:22.759 --> 00:32:29.839
repeated access to one man. Its findings were substantial. Beaumont
332
00:32:29.920 --> 00:32:36.240
described gastric juice more accurately, distinguished it from ordinary stomach mucus,
333
00:32:36.680 --> 00:32:42.039
and showed its chemical power over food. He compared digestion
334
00:32:42.200 --> 00:32:47.519
inside the body with digestion in warmed vials. He tracked
335
00:32:47.559 --> 00:32:52.880
the stomach's muscular movements, recorded temperature compared food, and documented
336
00:32:52.920 --> 00:32:59.119
how illness, exercise, and emotional disturbance could alter the process.
337
00:33:00.119 --> 00:33:06.559
As we mentioned earlier, he didn't discover hydrochloric acid. Beaumont's achievement, however,
338
00:33:06.839 --> 00:33:12.440
was to confirm and characterize human gastric chemistry while watching
339
00:33:12.559 --> 00:33:18.880
digestion occur in a living subject. Some conclusions aged poorly,
340
00:33:19.400 --> 00:33:26.759
as scientific conclusions often do. The central observations endured digestion
341
00:33:27.400 --> 00:33:32.880
was a chemical and mechanical process. The stomach secreted, churned,
342
00:33:32.960 --> 00:33:38.440
and responded to the condition of the entire person. The
343
00:33:38.480 --> 00:33:45.480
book elevated Beaumont from frontier army surgeon to celebrated physiological researcher.
344
00:33:46.279 --> 00:33:50.880
His work circulated in the United States and Europe. Physicians
345
00:33:50.960 --> 00:33:57.240
debated sending Saint Martin abroad, medical institutions sought more observations.
346
00:33:57.880 --> 00:34:04.039
Beaumont's rare opportunity became part of his professional identity, but
347
00:34:04.200 --> 00:34:07.359
Saint Martin did not remain in place for the next
348
00:34:07.519 --> 00:34:12.880
chapter that Beaumont had imagined. He returned to Canada in
349
00:34:12.920 --> 00:34:18.599
eighteen thirty four and never again worked for Beaumont. In
350
00:34:18.679 --> 00:34:22.360
a letter after leaving, he explained that life at home
351
00:34:22.519 --> 00:34:28.400
offered better prospects. He had a wife, children, and obligations
352
00:34:28.880 --> 00:34:33.960
that did not fit neatly into the doctor's research plans.
353
00:34:34.320 --> 00:34:39.719
Beaumont kept trying for years. Letters traveled through relatives, fur
354
00:34:39.840 --> 00:34:47.880
company contacts, physicians, and other intermediaries. Offers were discussed, Advances
355
00:34:47.960 --> 00:34:54.599
were disputed. Saint Martin sometimes considered terms and sometimes refused them.
356
00:34:55.239 --> 00:35:00.360
His family was repeatedly central whether they could travel, who
357
00:35:00.400 --> 00:35:03.559
would support them, and whether he would go without them.
358
00:35:03.960 --> 00:35:08.119
In early eighteen fifty two, nearly three decades after the
359
00:35:08.159 --> 00:35:16.599
first experiments, Beaumont's private correspondence became especially revealing. Two published
360
00:35:16.599 --> 00:35:23.920
transcriptions disagree over one pronoun. One renders Beaumont's demand as
361
00:35:24.440 --> 00:35:29.280
I must have him at all hazards. Another prince it,
362
00:35:30.320 --> 00:35:36.199
apparently referring to the investigation itself. The next passage removes
363
00:35:36.320 --> 00:35:42.039
much of the comfort that that ambiguity might offer. Beaumont
364
00:35:42.079 --> 00:35:47.239
proposed paying Saint Martin to come without his family once
365
00:35:47.280 --> 00:35:51.039
he had him alone again within his Keeping and Engagement,
366
00:35:51.599 --> 00:35:56.519
Beaumont wrote he would quote control him as I please.
367
00:35:58.000 --> 00:36:02.400
This was not the language of a cartoon sadist confessing
368
00:36:02.760 --> 00:36:08.079
pleasure and pain. It may actually be more unsettling than that.
369
00:36:09.199 --> 00:36:13.119
It was the language of a respected physician who believed
370
00:36:13.480 --> 00:36:18.360
the science was important, believed he had already sacrificed for it,
371
00:36:18.679 --> 00:36:24.480
and increasingly treated another man's access, movement, and family as
372
00:36:24.599 --> 00:36:30.960
obstacles to be managed. Saint Martin did not return. Beaumont
373
00:36:31.079 --> 00:36:36.559
died in eighteen fifty three, Honored for work that transformed
374
00:36:36.679 --> 00:36:43.239
the understanding of digestion. Saint Martin outlived him by twenty
375
00:36:43.360 --> 00:36:48.159
seven years. He did not refuse every later medical approach.
376
00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:53.719
In eighteen fifty six, he allowed physician Francis Gurney Smith
377
00:36:53.880 --> 00:36:59.039
to make a brief series of observations in Philadelphia. He
378
00:36:59.119 --> 00:37:02.880
also permitted physicians and medical groups to see the wound
379
00:37:02.960 --> 00:37:08.360
at other times. His agency did not require a permanent
380
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:12.519
rejection of medicine. It meant the choice could be his,
381
00:37:13.400 --> 00:37:18.400
with whom he dealt, and under what conditions He returned
382
00:37:18.400 --> 00:37:23.159
to Canada and to family life. The exact details of
383
00:37:23.199 --> 00:37:28.639
his later years are less securely recorded than Beaumont's career,
384
00:37:29.360 --> 00:37:34.639
because history preserved the doctor's papers far more carefully than
385
00:37:34.679 --> 00:37:40.320
the working man's ordinary life. We know Beaumont's measurements by
386
00:37:40.360 --> 00:37:44.000
the minute. We know the weights of food samples and
387
00:37:44.079 --> 00:37:50.480
the temperature inside Saint Martin's stomach. We know the doctor's frustrations, plans,
388
00:37:50.519 --> 00:37:56.079
and ambitions in his own handwriting. Saint Martin reaches us
389
00:37:56.119 --> 00:38:03.920
more often through contracts, complaints, departure, and other people's descriptions. Still,
390
00:38:04.320 --> 00:38:09.400
those traces are enough to see him acting. He refused surgery,
391
00:38:09.960 --> 00:38:14.920
he returned to demanding work, He married and raised children.
392
00:38:15.519 --> 00:38:22.079
He negotiated compensation, he left repeatedly. He allowed some examinations,
393
00:38:22.199 --> 00:38:26.760
and when Beaumont tried one last time to bring him
394
00:38:26.840 --> 00:38:33.840
back under his control, Saint Martin stayed away. Alexis Saint
395
00:38:33.920 --> 00:38:39.519
Martin died on June twenty fourth, eighteen eighty. What followed
396
00:38:39.599 --> 00:38:43.840
comes through the later historical report from the parish priest,
397
00:38:44.639 --> 00:38:50.119
relayed through a judge and eventually published by another physician.
398
00:38:50.920 --> 00:38:55.719
According to that account, the family resisted an autopsy, kept
399
00:38:55.719 --> 00:39:01.159
the body until decomposition made medical removal useless, and ordered
400
00:39:01.159 --> 00:39:06.360
a grave eight feet deep to discourage anyone from taking
401
00:39:06.440 --> 00:39:11.079
the remains. The account cannot be treated like a direct
402
00:39:11.239 --> 00:39:15.239
eyewitness statement from the family, but it fits a fear
403
00:39:15.920 --> 00:39:21.320
that was entirely rational. Even after Saint Martin died, a
404
00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:27.360
physician wrote, asking for his stomach. William Beaumont had genuinely
405
00:39:27.440 --> 00:39:33.559
saved his life. He had also produced Science of lasting importance.
406
00:39:34.440 --> 00:39:39.079
Neither fact cancels what came after pain that was recorded
407
00:39:39.119 --> 00:39:46.199
and sometimes continued through labor tied to bodily access, departures
408
00:39:46.280 --> 00:39:53.519
treated as disobedience, and private plans to regain control. Nor
409
00:39:53.639 --> 00:39:58.559
does that exploitation erase Saint Martin's choices. He was never
410
00:39:58.679 --> 00:40:03.440
only the patient on the or the name beneath Beaumont's title.
411
00:40:04.119 --> 00:40:10.079
He was a voyager, laborer, husband, father, and negotiator who
412
00:40:10.159 --> 00:40:14.639
repeatedly stepped beyond the frame the doctor built around him.
413
00:40:15.679 --> 00:40:20.360
Alexis Saint Martin gave medicine its first clear window into
414
00:40:20.360 --> 00:40:24.440
the living human stomach. But did the people looking through
415
00:40:24.480 --> 00:40:30.360
that window still see the man around it? That's the
416
00:40:30.480 --> 00:40:37.679
element that is most human and in all honesty, what
417
00:40:37.800 --> 00:40:45.000
really makes this terrifying and true. Terrifying and true is
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00:40:45.119 --> 00:40:48.960
narrated by Enrique Kuto, its executive produced by Rob Fields
419
00:40:49.079 --> 00:40:52.760
and bobble Topia dot Com, and produced by Dan Wilder,
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00:40:52.880 --> 00:40:55.840
with original theme music by Ray Mattis. If you have
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a story you think we should cover on Terrifying and True,
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send us an email at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com.
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And if you want to support us for as little
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and Craig Cohen. Thank you all so much and thank
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you for listening. We'll see you all right here next
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time on Terrifying and True.
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