THE CONQUEST OF DISEASE 



stomach. As early as 1786 he asserted that 

 the saliva had a digestive function. He sub- 

 jected foods outside of the hody to the action 

 of these juices and observed the effects. Then 

 an American physician, William Beaumont, 

 in 1825, began a series of observations which 

 attracted the attention of the whole scientific 

 world. The animal employed by him in his 

 experiments was a man, one Alexis St. Martin, 

 a hunter and trapper. This man had an open- 

 ing in the front wall of his stomach made by a 

 gun-shot wound, which resulted in a perma- 

 nent gastric fistula. Various substances were 

 introduced through this opening into the stom- 

 ach and the effects of digestion observed. 

 Beaumont held seances with St. Martin and 

 the hole in his stomach day after day and pub- 

 lished for the benefit of his brethren the results 

 of his observations. He not only discovered 

 the digestive effect of the stomach juices upon 

 the various foods but he studied the length of 

 time that foods remained in the stomach and 

 the peristaltic action of 'that organ. Following 

 this, physiologists made gastric fistulas in dogs 

 and were able to control absolutely these 

 studies. Now in the physiologic laboratory 

 we find a dog with a gastric fistula, that is, 



38 



