EXPERIMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE GASTRIC JUICE, AND THE PHYSIOLOGY OF DIGESTION

Plattsburgh [N.Y.]: Printed by F. P. Allen, 1833. 280 pp, including 3 wood-engraved figures in text. Original cloth-backed plain paper over boards, in modern cloth clamshell case. Bookplate of Jacob L. Chernovsky in case. Binding worn, joints cracked, leaves wrinkled, mold stains in outer leaves, contents mildly foxed. Good.

"To the medical bibliographer there are few more treasured Americana than the brown-backed, poorly printed octavo volume of 280 pages with the imprint "Plattsburgh, Printed by F. P. Allan, 1833'" (Osler 1972).

William Beaumont (1785-1853), the "Father of Gastric Physiology," was serving as a U.S. Army surgeon in (truncated) the Michigan Territory in 1822 when he treated Alexis St. Martin, an 18-year-old French-Canadian guide who had been
wounded in his left side by an accidental discharge of a musket loaded with duck shot. The wound healed but left a permanent fistula - a hole through which Beaumont would access St. Martin's stomach to study gastric juice and digestive processes over the course of the following decade.

While Beaumont's brother Samuel later claimed that this first edition consisted of 3000 copies, it was more likely only 1000: "five hundred (plus an additional fifty presentation copies bound in sheep) with the Plattsburgh imprint, and a smaller number issued by Lilly, Wait, and Company" (The Grolier Club, ONE HUNDRED BOOKS FAMOUS IN MEDICINE).

Cushing B206. Garrison-Morton 989 ("the most important study of digestion before Pavlov"). Grolier American 38. Grolier Medicine 61. HEIRS OF HIPPOCRATES 834. Howes B291, "b" ("Most important American contribution to medical science"). Waller 805. (Inventory #: 914)