MEDICINE, WARFARE, AND HISTORY — FULTON 429 



Fully conscious of the importance of his discovery, Lind wrote in the 

 preface to the first edition : 



The subject of the following sheets is of great importance to this nation ; the 

 most powerful in her fleets, and the most flourishing in her commerce, of any in 

 the world. Armies have been supposed to lose more of their men by sickness, 

 than by the sword. But this observation has been much more verified in our fleets 

 and squadrons; where the scurvy alone, during the last war [ending in 1748], 

 proved a more destructive enemy, and cut off more valuable lives, than the united 

 efforts of the French and Spanish arms. 



WILUAM BEAUMONT AND SILAS WEIR MITCHELL 



In 1853 the American medical profession mourned the death of 

 William Beaumont, U. S. Army surgeon, who, in addition to advanc- 

 ing the art of surgery in our armed forces, made a brilliant study of 

 the processes involved in human digestion. When Beaumont was 

 stationed at an isolated army barracks in northern Michigan, a French- 

 Canadian courier, Alexis St. Martin, was accidentally shot through the 

 stomach. Beaumont attended his wound with infinite care. When 

 it healed it left a fistula that Beaumont looked on not as a mere wound 

 but as a unique opportunity to inspect his patient's stomach mucosa 

 by direct vision and to study the rate of digestion of individual food- 

 stuffs through action of the gastric juices. He was also able to remove 

 these digestive secretions and to study their action on food outside the 

 body, a study that resulted in his celebrated monograph, "Experi- 

 ments and Observations on the Gastric Juice, and the Physiology of 

 Digestion," ° which so well exemplified Pasteur's famous dictum, "In 

 the field of observation, chance favours only the mind which is 

 prepared." 



The United States armed forces have had many other illustrious 

 medical officers who have done original work through opportunity to 

 study wounded men, ours as well as those of the enemy. Many names 

 come to mind, such as that of Jolin Shaw Billings ; but no one during 

 the Civil War occupies the position of Silas Weir Mitchell, a physi- 

 ologist by training and a neurologist through special interest. 

 Mitchell, with W. W. Keen (who ultimately became a celebrated Phil- 

 adelphia surgeon) and G. R. Morehouse, early in the Civil War (1861) 

 had occasion to study peripheral nerve injuries and the sensory and 

 motor disturbances that result therefrom. Perusal of the protocols 

 of their preliminary Circular Letter issued through the Office of the 

 Surgeon General on March 10, 1864,^ and of the monograph that they 



• Plattsburgh, 1833. 



* Mitchell, S. W. ; Morehouse, G. R. ; and Keen, W. W., Jr., Reflex paralysis, 

 the result of gunshot wounds, founded chiefly upon cases observed in the United 

 States General Hospital, Christian Street, Philadelphia, Circ. No. 6, Surgeon-Gen- 

 eral's Office (March 10), 1S64. [Reprinted, Yale Medical Library, New Haven, 

 Conn., 1941.] 



