Reviews: Frontier Doctor: William Beaumont, America's First Great Medical Scientist

Horsman R. 320 pages. Columbia, MO: Univ of Missouri Pr; 1996. $39.95. ISBN 082621052X. Order phone 573-882-7641.

Field of medicine: History of medicine.

Audience: Physicians, historians, and the general public.

Purpose: Many schoolchildren and most physicians and scientists know that Alexis St. Martin, a Canadian voyageur, had an opening in his abdomen that exposed the inside of his stomach, allowing his physician, William Beaumont, to conduct experiments on the function of the stomach. Reginald Horsman, Emeritus Professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, now provides the definitive biography of Beaumont.

Content: Beaumont learned medicine from a physician preceptor in St. Albans, Vermont. He did …