ALEXIS ST. MARTIN AND ALCOHOL 161 



easiest to digest, and he knew that what was good for 

 St. Martin was good for other men too. 



As it happened, Dr. Beaumont was a doctor in the 

 United States army. He therefore decided that this was 

 just the time to see whether it was best for a man to put 

 alcohol into his stomach every day. He knew that if 

 alcohol could help anybody it would certainly be good 

 for soldiers, and I suppose he wanted to be sure about 

 this so as to be able to advise soldiers to use it if 

 it was really going to make them braver or stronger 

 or healthier. 



On the other hand, if wine or beer or whisky and such 

 things were likely to do more harm than good, he wanted 

 to know that too, so as to be on the safe side and advise 

 soldiers against using anything of the kind. 



Before this time doctors could only judge about alco- 

 hol by the way men felt and acted after they drank it. 

 Nobody had seen how the stomach itself looked and 

 acted when men put alcohol into it. 



Even when Bum and Tipsy used alcohol, Dr. Hodge 

 could not tell what the drink really did to their stomachs, 

 for there was no hole for him to look through. He only 

 knew that it made the dogs weaker than other dogs and 

 not so brave. 



Dr. Beaumont now proposed to find out something 

 more than this, and fortunately, when he asked Alexis 

 St. Martin whether he w r ould be willing to have his 



