Alexis St. Martin

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Alexis St. Martin, age 67
Alexis St. Martin, age 67[1]

Alexis St. Martin (April 18, 1794 – June 24, 1880 was a Canadian voyageur who is known for his part in experiments on digestion in humans, conducted by the American physician William Beaumont between 1822 and 1833.

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[edit] Work with Beaumont

On June 6, 1822 Alexis St. Martin was working at a fur-trading post in Mackinac Island in Lake Huron when he was accidentally shot with a musket at close range. His shirt caught on fire, and the charge of the musket shot blew a fist-sized hole through his side and into his stomach.[citation needed]

William Beaumont, a US Army surgeon, was stationed at a nearby army post and treated the wound. Although St. Martin was a healthy 28-year-old, he was not expected to recover due to the severity of his wound. Beaumont explains in a later paper that the shot blew off fragments of St. Martin's muscles and broke a few of his ribs. After replacing St. Martin's stomach, bleeding him, and giving him a cathartic, Beaumont marked St. Martin's progress.[2] For the next 17 days, all food he ate reemerged from his new gastric fistula. Finally after 17 days, the food began to stay in St. Martin's stomach and his bowels began to return to their natural functions. When the wound healed itself, the edge of the hole in the stomach had attached itself to the edge of the hole in the skin, creating a permanent gastric fistula. There was very little scientific understanding of digestion at the time, and Beaumont recognized the opportunity he had in St. Martin - he could literally watch the processes of digestion by dangling food on a string into St. Martin's stomach, then later pulling it out to observe to what extent it had been digested. Beaumont continued to experiment on St. Martin off and on until 1833.

Alexis St. Martin did not allow the experiments to be conducted as an act to repay Beaumont for keeping him alive, but rather because Beaumont got the illiterate St. Martin to sign a contract to work as a servant. Beaumont recalls the chores St. Martin did: "During this time, in the intervals of experimenting, he performed all the duties of a common servant, chopping wood, carrying burthens, etc. with little or no suffering or inconvenience from his wound." Although these chores were not bothersome, some of the experiments were painful to St. Martin, for example when Beaumont had placed sacks of food in the stomach, Beaumont noted: “the boy complained of some pain and uneasiness at the breast.” Other symptoms St. Martin felt during experiments were a sense of weight and distress at the scrobiculus cordis; slight vertigo and dimness of vision.

[edit] After the experiments

Alexis St. Martin, age 81
Alexis St. Martin, age 81[3]

Beaumont published his experiments in 1833 as Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice, and the Physiology of Digestion. He and St. Martin parted ways with Beaumont going, eventually, to St. Louis, Missouri and St. Martin to Canada. Off and on for the next 20 years, Beaumont tried to get St. Martin to move to St. Louis, but the move never occurred. Beaumont died in 1853, partly as a result of a slip on ice-covered steps.[4]

When Alexis St. Martin died at St. Thomas de Joliette, Quebec in 1880, his family delayed his burial until the body began to decompose, in order to prevent his “resurrection” by medical men. Many of the latter were interested in performing an autopsy and there was even interest in obtaining the stomach for the Army Medical Museum.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Mayer, Jesse S. (1912). Life and Letters of Dr. William Beaumont. C. V. Mosby Company (St. Louis), 282. 
  2. ^ Beaumont, William (1833). Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. FF Allen (Plattsburgh), 9–10. 
  3. ^ Mayer, Jesse S. (1912). Life and Letters of Dr. William Beaumont. C. V. Mosby Company (St. Louis), 298. 
  4. ^ Mayer, Jesse S. (1912). Life and Letters of Dr. William Beaumont. C. V. Mosby Company (St. Louis), 296. 

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links