Weeknotes: October 19–23, 2026

Monday, October 19

In class, we learn about William Beaumont, the "Father of Gastric Physiology." In 1822, on Mackinac Island, an American Fur Company employee named Alexis St. Martin was accidentally shot in the gut with a shotgun at close range. He survived, but with a hole in his stomach (a fistula), through which his doctor (Beaumont) was able to observe and research the digestion process. No longer able to work for the Fur Company, St. Martin was hired as Beaumont's servant and medical test subject. According to Beaumont's Wikipedia page: 

Most of the experiments were conducted by tying a piece of food to a string and inserting it through the hole into the stomach. Every few hours, Beaumont would remove the food and observe how well it had been digested. 

Before this part of the lecture, my attention was fleeting, but now that we're talking about creepy 19th century surgical experiments, I'm all in.