As of the 21st century, science and technology have made considerable progress, especially in the medical field. The average life expectancy of human beings is also increasing in a visible way. However, this is inseparable from the continuous exploration of medical pioneers.
William Beaumont, considered an authority on the digestive system, "the father of gastric physiology", and the achievements of this doctor are also inseparable from another person, this is Alexis ·Alexis St Martin
The bullet pierced through the body, leaving a slap-sized wound, but he survived and became a scholar's experiment. What exactly happened?
St. Martin is from Michigan . In 1822, the American Fur Company built a warehouse here and recruited a large number of employees. St. Martin was one of them. As a boatman, he ran to Indians through Lake Huron. tribe, buy fur from them from hunting.
However, during a boat trip, misfortune suddenly came, the shotgun suddenly went off, and the fine shrapnel hit St. Martin's abdomen, penetrated his body, and left a slap-sized wound.
After the accident, St. Martin was quickly sent to a nearby military hospital for rescue and treatment, and the chief surgeon doctor was Beaumont, who served as a field doctor in the Michigan Army.
Almost everyone thinks that St. Martin should not survive. Even when Beaumont took out the bullet for him, he found that the other organs from the stomach were not damaged, but because of medical conditions, such a large wound, St. Martin still has a high probability of dying from postoperative infection.
But what is surprising is that St. Martin survived. The bullet made a big hole in his abdomen, which directly led to the penetration of the stomach wall , and even part of the lung lobe and stomach body inside, whenever St. Martin When eating, food would flow out from the opening of his stomach, so he could only cover the wound with gauze every time he ate.
In modern medical terms, this phenomenon is called gastric fistula, that is, the non-physiological communication between the stomach and adjacent organs or abdominal wall, most of the gastric fistulas come from surgery, such as It is very rare for St. Martin to be formed because of gunshot wound to .
Beaumont was so surprised that he had never seen this phenomenon before, and the doctor suddenly realized that it might be able to uncover the mystery of the digestive system. So he came up with the idea of observing St. Martin.
After being wounded by a gunshot at St. Martin, he naturally could no longer live as a normal person and lost his job. Beaumont took the opportunity to provide St. Martin with a "servant" job with an annual salary of $150.
is just working, he is mostly lying on the bed, letting Beaumont observe 's own body.
In just a few years, Beaumont made 238 observations and records of St. Martin's stomach. When St. Martin swallowed beef, bread or vegetables, he would use tweezers to remove it from the fistula for component analysis, Or simply put the food through the fistula, and take it out after a while to observe the melted liquid. He will also observe the condition of St. Martin's stomach when he is resting or exercising.
Sometimes, Beaumont will also take out gastric juice through St. Martin's fistula , and put them together with starch and other substances for reaction.
When the time came to 1833, after nearly ten years of observation, Beaumont wrote the famous stomach medicine "Experiments and Observations on Gastric Juice and Digestive Physiology", and summarized several important conclusions:
1 . The main component of stomach digestive juice is hydrochloric acid
2. Digestive juice and gastric secretion are completely two different things Ability is not the same, it will be differentiated by the structure of food...
It is these conclusions that provide valuable experience for later medical scientists and further uncover the secrets of the human body.
It is worth mentioning that St. Martin was not willing to be an experiment for ten years. For him, this is a personal insult. Although Beaumont has repeatedly raised his salary, in the end St. The family left the doctor and went to live in Canada .
And Beaumont eventually died of sepsis in 1853, but St. Martin's wounds did not affect his life too much until he died of illness in 1880. The man was 83 years old and had 17 children. And in 1962, in recognition of St. Martin's contributions as a volunteer, the Canadian Physiological Society erected a monument in recognition of St. Martin's.
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