Scholarly Book Review: Open Wound - Recommended Highly!!!

Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont A shotgun misfires inside the American Fur Company store in Northern Michigan, and Alexis St. Martin’s death appears imminent. It’s 1822, and, as the leaders of Mackinac Island examine St. Martin’s shot-riddled torso, they decide not to incur a single expense on behalf of the indentured fur trapper. They even go so far as to dismiss the attention of U.S. Army Assistant Surgeon William Beaumont, the frontier fort’s only doctor. But in the name of charity and goodness, Beaumont ignores the orders and saves the young man’s life. What neither the doctor nor his patient understands—yet—is that even as Beaumont’s care of St. Martin continues for decades, the motives and merits of his attention are far from clear. Thus begins the true story that inspired Dr. Jason Karlawish’s acclaimed novel Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont, which was featured as part of NYAM’s Author Night Series on October 10. Rooted deeply in historic fact, Open Wound artfully fictionalizes the complex, lifelong relationship between Beaumont and his illiterate French Canadian patient. The young trapper’s injury never completely healed, Dr. Karlawish explained, leaving a hole into his stomach that the curious doctor used as a window to explore the chemical nature of digestion. “Beaumont realized, ‘I have a living laboratory to study digestion, right here on the frontier of America, and I’m going to do it,’” Dr. Karlawish said. Eager to rise up from his humble origins and self-conscious that his medical training occurred as an apprentice to a rural physician rather than at an elite university, Beaumont seized the opportunity to perform hundreds of experiments upon his patient’s stomach in order to write a book that he hoped would establish his legitimacy and secure his prosperity. After the book’s publication, he managed to build a career as a successful and respected physician, although his motives in his treatment of Alexis St. Martin were later called into question in court when he was testifying as an expert witness on a case. “It’s about transformations—the transformation from patient to subject to employee to object, and from physician to scientist to entrepreneur,” Dr. Karlawish said of the book. It’s about how people succeed in these transformations, and also how they fail.” About Dr. Beaumont, he added, “It’s the story of a most modern American man—he wanted to be someone.” Jason Karlawish, MD is Professor of Medicine and Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is Board-certified in internal medicine and geriatric medicine. He is Associate Director of and practicing clinician in the Penn Memory Center; a Senior Fellow at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; on the faculty of the Penn Center for Neuroscience and Society; a Fellow of the Institute of Aging; and a Senior Fellow of the Leonard David Institute of Health Economics, all at the University of Pennsylvania.