If You Can Stomach This

Written by Anah in Saturday, August 23rd 2008 under Did You Know

Did You Know….

In yet another obscure detail in this world, Wisconsin and the stomachs of everyone around the world are connected.

No, we are not all connected together with Cheese Heads. We are not connected together with the squeaky cheese called cheese curds from Rudolph, WI. Instead, we are connected by our stomachs with a physician that lived in Wisconsin from 1826-1832 AD.

Dr. William Beaumont is known as the “Father of Gastric Physiology” or he started the bulk of the information on how the digestive process works. The manner in which he did this might make you feel like you just got punched in the gut though. We can definitely have sympathy for his subject who was Alexis St. Martin.

Mr. Martin has the great misfortune of getting shot point blank or 3 feet or 1 meter away with a musket filled with duck shot. It would be the equivalent of a shotgun now. It blew a hole in Mr. Martin’s side that damaged the lung and stomach on the right hand side. Dr. Beaumont was able to save his life but the wound did not heal correctly. There was a 2 ½ inch hole from the outside to directly into his stomach that remained.

Through this hole into his stomach, Dr. Beaumont did several experiments by dropping various foods tied to a thread ranging from 12 raw oysters to boiled chicken and many other things then fishing it back out a few hours later. So thanks to Dr. Beaumont’s observations and notes and Mr. Martin’s hole in his stomach, Wisconsin got to be the testing grounds for a different kind of fishing.

We should keep something in perspective though. Back then if you sustained a significant injury to your leg or arm, they cut it off. If you received a head injury, they would drill holes in your skull to relieve the pressure. Chemical analysis was very basic and not well advanced. So Mr. Martin living through his injuries was a minor miracle by itself. Pharmaceutical drugs consisted of getting drunk on whiskey so you wouldn’t feel the pain of the saw as much.

This is part of the reason why I’m not sold on pharmaceutical drugs. They haven’t been around that long and with the side effects few are really worth taking. You can often do better without them by using the other methods used for the 4800 years prior to them coming out. No, I’m not recommending getting drunk and hacking off your leg.

I will end this interesting piece of information with something for you to remember. The next time you eat a raw oyster or have some other meat slide down your throat, give thanks to the two guys in Wisconsin who fished that food back out to study it. Want to feel his pain? Tie your oyster to a thread, swallow it, and then pull it back up. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Thank you,

Anah

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