Dr. William Beaumont His Attention To Detail Helped Unlock The Mystery Of Digestion.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: Gloria Lau

Not everyone hears opportunity knocking. But when you answer the door and then work hard at making the most of that opportunity, success is often the result.

So William Beaumont discovered. After treating a patient for a stomach wound, Beaumont (1785-1853) spent more than 25 years carefully observing and researching the workings of the man's digestive tract. In doing so, he became the first to discover the actual digestive process and paved the way for much modern medical research.

Like most "doctors" of the time, Beaumont never graduated from medical school. He worked as an apprentice to a doctor in Vermont and, after two years,enlisted in the Army as an assistant surgeon.

After the War of 1812, he was stationed at Fort Mackinac, near the confluence of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. In this frontier community, at a store called John Jacob Astor's American Fur Co., Beaumont chanced upon an accident that changed his life.

The store was crowded the morning of June 6, 1822. Animal trappers, fur traders and Indians gathered at the store's trading post to try to sell their animal skins to the store. That morning a gun accidentally fired. A 19-year-oldFrench Canadian named Alexis St. Martin fell with a gaping wound on his left side.

Beaumont was called. He later wrote that he didn't expect St. Martin to survive more than a few hours. The wound was so big and deep that part of the young man's lungs -- the size of a "turkey egg" -- and part of his stomach jutted out of the wound.