Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont

by Jason Karlawish

  Even the case report, the one return upon his investment, taunted him. It was published in January 1825, in the Medical Recorder, but under the name of Dr. Joseph Lovell, Washington City. Five months later, a correction appeared: The case of the fur trapper with a gastric fistula was reported by Dr. William Beaumont, Mackinac Island in the Michigan Territory. The correction was small consolation. He was forced to maintain his place in Medicine's order. The credit went to the Harvard-trained physician.

  He found solace writing in his notebook. His pen worked like a scalpel; his words were a surgery cutting away his grief and frustration.

  Why will you not accept your lot in life as your brothers, as your father, do? You could have all you have—your wife, your child, your small fortune, your commission in the army—you could have all you have and yet be content.

  One morning, after several miles of silent travel along a misty road, as they ate apple slices while Sarah slept in her mother's arms, Deborah turned to her husband, smiled and kissed his cheek.

  “'Tis a gift to be simple,” she said.

  He smiled, and then he returned her kiss on her lips. “Indeed it is.”

  BY FALL, THE RUMORS OF WAR had vanished. A Great Council of all the tribes, the Indian agents and the army drew up new borders and promised generous compensations to respect these borders. The chiefs smoked the peace pipe and buried the war tomahawk with a promise never to raise it again as long as the waters of the Mississippi ran free. William, Deborah and Sarah Beaumont settled into the surgeon's quarters at Fort Howard, on the banks of the Fox River in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Within a month William Beaumont, MD, was promoted to surgeon in the U.S. Army.

  Finally, he could start his life and his career anew.

  He set to his work with the zeal of his youth. He and Deborah attended dinner parties and dances in the society of officers and agents of the American Fur Company. The wives organized a chorus and a literary salon. The officers performed theatricals in the mess hall. By spring, Sarah could sing her alphabet, Beaumont had purchased a forty-acre lot along the Fox River, and Deborah had given birth to a girl they named Lucretia.

  A mild winter followed by a dry spring was conducive to the health of the populace, but in the summer, two weeks of rains swelled the river and flooded the swamps into waist-deep ponds. The waters spread over the lowlands. The hay fields were flooded, and when the river receded, stagnant pools and shallow ponds remained. Green frogs appeared from the muck, and within a week, the still water turned brown, bubbles rose and the swamp fevers began. They did not cease until the first frost.

  Beaumont began drafting notes for an article on the nature and character of the intermittent fevers of the Fox River Valley. His notebooks, though, less and less preoccupied him. In time, he put them away. Entire months passed without a thought of Alexis, and when some event kindled a memory, when he read a report of a fascinating surgical case, the memory of his ambition was like the recollection of romantic desire. Distant, small and fading.

  He had decided there was neither pleasure nor profit to be had by writings and scientific experiment. His pleasure was his growing family, and his profit was in the practice of medicine, and investment in land. In the past year, he had befriended Hector Berny, the land agent, and with Berny's sagacious advice, he had purchased three contiguous parcels of land in Green Bay, now 120 acres total, suitable for farming, proximal to the river for trade, but well above the floodplain. Beaumont's Saturday-afternoon tally of his wealth made him content. Deborah was right. It was a gift to be simple and to live in the corruptions of neither poverty nor wealth, but solidly in the middle. He planned to resign from the army and set up a private practice in St. Louis.

  On the afternoon of the 17th of August, 1827, the corporal in charge of the mails delivered Beaumont a letter whose return address bore the name Theodore Mathews, Agent of the American Fur Company, Sackett's Harbor, New York.

  15 July 1827

  Dear Dr. Beaumont,

  I trust this letter finds you and your family well & happy and settled among good friends. Abigail and I speak frequently & fondly of those pleasant years of convivial sociability on Mackinac Island among our little Island Village. I remain under the employment of the Company and obtained promotion to agent; gone are my shop keeper days. The fur trade remains prosperous though talk is that its Grand Days are fading; pelts are not as readily plentiful & competition harries us & fashion shifts; still, slowly I make my progress in this world as I am certain you do as well.

  I pray that this letter has reached you with all haste for I have most wonderful news. Since May, I have been traveling through Lower Canada to solicit voyageurs. Outside of Berthier I heard stories of the “man with the hole in his side.” Naturally, I made all haste to investigate these rumors & behold I have found him! I have located Alexis.

  Ramsay Crooks has long urged us to inform you should we hear of the man. Alas, without your devoted ministrations, he is now poor and miserable beyond description; his wound is worse than when you left it. The hole remains as it was in the beginning.

  He is married now and has two (!) children. He ekes out a miserable existence as a kind of day laborer among his kind; I shall not burden you with the sordid details except that he received my visit with his wily kind of courtesy and expressed his Sincere Regret over his flight from your Care and Generous Welfare. He spoke of a Dr. Caldwell from Montreal who has visited him on several occasions. I think he is willing to return to your care and employment should you so desire it.

  I could have him sent back to you upon a Company bateau with little inconvenience. I did all I could to bring him up, but could not succeed with these endeavors that cost me $14. I will be obliged if you will let me know whether I should do anything more to get him back and how I shall get my money back as the Company will not allow it to me.

  I await your reply and again relay my greetings to you and charming Deborah and darling Sarah.

  Your humble servant,

  Theodore Mathews

  Agent, The American Fur Company

  TWENTY-SIX

  BEAUMONT'S FINGERS TREMBLED. He had to stand up and pace the room. It was as if he had been sleeping for the last three years and now, like some Rip Van Winkle, he had awoken. His once-forgotten investment in the company had reaped its return. He laughed so hard he wiped his eyes. He had actually considered resigning his commission!

  He began to imagine the future. Once he had Alexis here he would have him, and in time he would have his experiments well done. He would start with measures of temperature and studies of digestion both artificial and natural. Experiments to ascertain the proper temperature of digestion and the effects of climate on it. It was evident the weather was the primae causa of ill health and disease and that chemical reactions had a caloric requirement and that digestion was a chemical process. He simply needed to demonstrate how each was connected to the other.

  He wanted to tell Deborah straightaway, and he put on his cap and made for the door, but stopped at the threshold. He just let go of the door handle and stepped back into his office, took off his cap and swung it around his outstretched fingers like some toy. He dropped the cap on his desk and sat down heavy in the chair.

  “I must be calm, calm but resolute,” he said to himself. “And I must be patient. He's found, but he's not yet mine. Caldwell,” he murmured. “Caldwell.”

  He took up the letter again. Dr. Caldwell. It could be a calculated ruse on Alexis's part. It would be like Alexis to do that. Like the drinking trick. Never the mind. Beaumont would marshal the forces of the American Fur Company to take Alexis in hand and bring him to him. Not one cent would pass to Alexis's hand until that hand had grasped Beaumont's.

  He composed his reply to Theodore Mathews—I beseech you, arrange with the Company to have Alexis brought here with all possible haste. Tell him I shall care for the wound as before, and he shall resume his duties as a household servant at a salary of 300 dollars per year. He included in the l
etter payment for Mathews's fourteen dollars of expenses. Then he took up another sheet and began a letter to Ramsay Crooks. After some lines about Deborah, Sarah and Lucretia, the death of the infant William, the journey inspecting hospitals and life in Green Bay, he turned to the heart of the matter.

  Remember when we spoke of Science under the canopy of stars on Mackinac Island those many years ago. This is the opportunity for the Company to serve Science and the American People. Alexis is a treasure, and he rightly belongs here in America in the hands of an American doctor. What assistance the Company can offer to assure his speedy travel would be most valuable.

  He walked to the clerk's office to post the letters.

  Four days passed before he told Deborah about Alexis. It was noon, and they had some two hours alone before they would gather Sarah and Lucretia from the birthday party of Emily, the daughter of Colonel Willoughby, the commander of Fort Howard. They were seated beneath the shade of a maple tree, the remains of a picnic spread before them on an Indian blanket they had bought in Mackinac.

  She was stone-faced as he narrated Mathews's letter. When he finished, she smoothed her hands over the flat of her thighs and said plainly, “I had wondered why you were with your notebook.”

  “My notebook?”

  “You've had that out these past days.”

  She was correct. Since he had received Mathews's letter he had taken his notebook from his trunk and reviewed his notes of the experiments.

  “I have been considering whether to complete the treatise on the fevers along the Fox River Valley and considering as well whether it's worth recommencing the experiments with Alexis. It's clear I should, that I must in fact. Science demands it. Progress demands it.”

  “So then he's to come here?”

  “Yes,” he nodded smartly. “I've written to Theodore to bring Alexis here. Theodore has been most accommodating; he proposes to secure the necessary resources of the company, a bateau even, to transport him. But when all is done, all is arranged, it won't be any sooner than the coming spring. I'd wish it sooner, but patience is necessary.”

  “It's strange,” she observed, “but I'd not thought of him for several months, and yet for a time he was such a part of our lives. Isn't that funny how we only seem to forget?” She considered her own question. “So then he'll stay here with us as before?”

  “Yes. And he'll resume his work as our household servant. I'll let the Hankins boy know he's not needed when the time comes, if in fact we are still here when Alexis joins us. I expect that by next summer we'll be at another posting. I'm long past due for a review of my assignment. Now that I'm a surgeon with eight years service in the remote regions, I've every right to a more settled posting. Soon I'll write to Lovell with this news and a request for assignment to St. Louis.”

  “Do you think you can secure a post in St. Louis?”

  He took up her right hand as if it were some a precious gift and kissed her fingertips.

  “I cannot promise St. Louis, but I do have every intention of making that request. We've passed long, long years outside the pale of civilization, endured hardships, and now we've every right to a posting such as St. Louis. I should like to enjoy your singing to the melody you play on a piano in our own parlor.”

  She tried to smile. “How long, how long do you think your experiments will last?”

  “Don't worry, I shall see to it that he has lodging nearby. Not with us. He can do the work as a common household servant and live nearby. I have every intention to foster in him the virtues of industriousness and frugality.”

  “But how long?”

  “Honestly, I can't say. Once, I thought all I should do is prove digestion is a chemical process. But one desire burns in my soul, and that is to observe and to discover, like any good explorer. There is an end to the journey, but I can't claim when it will be. I think that is the fault of many scientists. They claim to know what they want to find, and so they perform their experiments to find just that thing. Their journey becomes almost circular. I shall explore with the singular conviction that this book shall be a book for all to read.”

  Somewhere a bell sounded the hour. Deborah rose and began to assemble their things. He watched her as she shook out the crumbs and carefully rolled the soiled utensils in a wide napkin.

  “Deborah, because this is a medical matter I have not seen the necessity to engage you in its many and multiple details, and yet I know how Alexis is not only my patient but also a household servant. I appeal to you to see that he is an investment for us, much like the investments the company makes. The company's selling ladies' and men's fur hats. That's the fashion now. But Lord rue the day when fashions shifts, as it always does. Think of the man who staked his fortune in powdered wigs. What poor-house contains him? Alexis offers knowledge of great value to science, to the public. That kind of knowledge is not subject to the whims of fashion.”

  She stood looking down at her husband.

  “What is to say he will not flee again and leave you as bereft as before?”

  “Because he comes freely. Why then would he flee if he comes freely and of his own accord?”

  “But he was free then too.”

  “His circumstances have changed now.”

  “How?”

  “He is destitute. Sit down, please.”

  She remained standing, her hands upon her hips, the blanket draped through the crook of her right arm.

  “Don't you see?” she insisted.

  “That he is destitute, I'm not surprised. And I'd hazard you're not either. The man tended to intemperance, and judging by the number of children, he clearly has the Negroes' defect in moral and prudential restraint on the sexual connection.” He looked at her, and then he looked away. “Excuse me, please. But truly you know the meaning of my words.”

  “That he is destitute and has a family and has no choice.” She entreated her husband. “William, don't you see? He'll stay until he gets what he wants, and flee again, leaving us out whatever dollars you pay him. He does not care about the science of digestion.”

  She turned away to face the mouth of the Fox River. Two shirtless men were working their way slowly in a rowboat, one at each oar, laughing like boys.

  “That's simply part of his calculation, as it is for any man,” he observed. “Theodore Mathews wrote that Alexis has worked as a voyageur. I'd venture Alexis must ask himself what this opportunity is worth. There are other doctors. Some Dr. Caldwell has shown interest in him. Alexis has a choice. He could work for Caldwell if he wished. I shall certainly pay him, as I have, and in fact pay him more than I did in Mackinac, for he has a family to support. He comes of his own free will, stays until the work is done, and I, yes I, I will pay him. Man to man. Deborah, could you have the common courtesy to face your husband when he talks to you?”

  She did as his courtesy required. “When he left aboard that steamship, you were beside yourself with grief, and now here you are before me wanting him back. I'm just thinking of you and how you suffered when he fled. For weeks you brooded. You mourned. Do you want that to pass again? Do you? What is it you want, William Beaumont? What is it, and will Alexis St. Martin give it to you?”

  She folded the blanket and took up her basket. “Come now. We must collect our children.”

  IN THE DAYS AFTER THE LETTER from Theodore Mathews arrived, ideas for experiments returned like long-dormant dreams. As Beaumont reviewed the contents of his notebook of experiments, plans clarified. He expected he would fill its pages and the pages of perhaps two more before he composed a book suitable for publication on the physiology of gastric digestion, a book that would be read not only by every doctor in the surgeons corps but by all doctors and even the general public. A book that would cross the seas, to London. Even Paris.

  That week's work was the usual diseases of warm and damp September days with chilled evenings. Preoccupied as he was with plans for experiments on Alexis, the work he had to do, his duties to his family, Deborah's remarks kindl
ed a panic in him. By Saturday afternoon, his attention flitted over his quarterly report to Surgeon General Lovell, and his eyelids twitched from exhaustion.

  It was folly for him to think he had the skill and time to execute experiments. Deborah was right. The man would flee as soon as he got the money he wanted. He began composing a letter to Surgeon General Lovell proposing Alexis be sent to Washington City, where Lovell and his colleagues could perform research, but one Sunday evening, he awoke from a dream.

  He was in a theater of sorts, the walls were lined with red silk, and there were men and women dressed as if for a ball. He was looking down on them, from some place between the glowing ceiling and their attentive gaze, and he was talking about his book. He had received some sort of honor, or medal. There were men in robes. People applauded. The room was bright with a kind of yellow light, and bunting hung beneath the boxes. The images grew disconnected. Men were talking about him. His father was among them, bragging about his son, the famous physician.