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A Blast From the Past

Ira M. Rutkow, MD, MPH, DrPH

Arch Surg. 1998;133:1259.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

A musket blast, a gastrocutaneous fistula, and research into the physiology of digestion. These all became central components in one of the most famous and influential episodes in the history of American surgery. On June 6, 1822, an illiterate 19-year-old French Canadian hunter named Alexis St Martin (1803?-1880) was wounded in the left side of the upper abdomen by an accidental musket discharge of duckshot, an incident that left him with a permanent gastrocutaneous fistula. The untoward event occurred just outside of Fort Mackinac, Territory of Michigan, an army base where William Beaumont (1785-1853) was stationed as post surgeon. As Beaumont would later relate:

I saw him in twenty-five or thirty minutes after the accident. . . a portion of the stomach was lacerated through all its coats, and pouring out the food he had taken for his breakfast. . . one year from . . . [Full Text of this Article]