24 BEAUMONT 



horseback to the old meeting house. Beaumont was blessed with such 

 rigorous parental discipline in youth that he explained his lapses in 

 church attendance in after life by the statement that during his 

 youth he had made up for a lifetime of church attendance. Further 

 than that he was a courageous and fearless boy, little is known of his 

 early life. It is said that he developed deafness, which became more 

 marked as he grew older, from standing near a cannon which was 

 being fired, simply to outwit playmates of his own age. 



The beginning of last century found Beaumont a boy of fifteen 

 years. It was twenty-four years since the first birthday of the Ameri- 

 can Nation. Beaumont's youth was contemporaneous with one of the 

 most stirring epochs in world history. The United States was begin- 

 ning to assume an important place among the nations of the world. 

 Beaumont left home during the winter of 1806-7 with, we are told, an 

 outfit consisting of a horse and cutter, a barrel of cider, and a hundred 

 dollars of hard earned money. He traveled Northward, reaching in 

 the spring of 1807 the little village of Champlain, New York. He was 

 very favorably impressed with his surroundings and with the people, 

 who were mostly farmers, and whom he characterized as ''peaceful 

 and industrious in general." Here he established his "Lares and 

 Penates" and followed the career of schoolmaster. Coming from one 

 of the best New England schools his services were much in demand. 

 While teaching school and during the vacation he found time to de- 

 vote to medical studies. He had supplied himself with books borrowed 

 from Dr. Pomeroy of Burlington, Vt., which town was on his itinerary 

 to Champlain. Beaumont, as many since his day have done, made 

 teaching a stepping stone to the profession of m.edicine, and an excel- 

 lent experience it is for the aspiring savant. In 1810 he was apprentic- 

 ed to Dr. Chandler of St. Albans, Vt. He seems to have exhibited a 

 wise choice in the matter of preceptor. "Living under the same 

 roof," writes Dr. Myer, describing the medical education of the 

 times, "as was customary in the days of medical apprenticeship, the 

 preceptor could look after both the mind and morals of his pupils. 

 The fledgeling in return for the instruction received at the hands of 

 his master, not only compensated him for his trouble, but performed 

 many of the menial offices of a servant about the house and office. 

 It was he who prepared the powders, mixed the concoctions, made 

 pills, swept the office, kept the bottles clean, assisted in operations 

 and often through main force suppHed the place of the anaesthetic of 

 , today, in the amputation of limbs and other surgical procedures. He 

 ( rode about with the doctor from house to house, profiting by his per- 

 \ sonal experience and jotting down on the pages of his note book and on 

 ^r J the tablets of his memory the words of wisdom that fell from his mas- 

 i ter's lips. * * * He was taught the symptoms of disease, the 

 ( crude methods of diagnosis, the art of prescription writing and the 

 'process of cupping and bleeding, considered so effective in its day."* 

 Medical books were rare and expensive, and fortunate was the 

 student who had access to them. Dissections were rarely performed, 

 owing largely to the fact of inadequate means of preserving cadavers. 

 Such were young Beaumont's opportunities. 



Beaumont spent the two years of his apprenticeship with dili- 

 gence, studying the masters. He dissected whenever an opportunity 

 *Life and letters of Dr. William Beaumont, by Jesse S. Myer. 



