Scientific research has enabled the rapid creation of vaccines against COVID-19. But do we ever think of the people who are subjected to experimentation in order to obtain these medical discoveries? Without them, there is no medical progress. Wouldn’t it be appropriate to question ourselves a little about their precious contribution, which is not done without a remarkable and essential self-sacrifice?
The famous novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley, presents a being created from scratch by a scientist. This creature feels the need to detach itself from its master, of which it has in fact become the victim. In the same way or almost, in a period not very far from the publication of the book by the English author, Alexis Saint-Martin, a Quebec trapper born in 1794, also became the object of the pressing attention of a scientific.
In either case, the research subject becomes dependent on the researcher. In a way, the researcher takes possession of his object of research, and this situation imposes itself as very trying in the case of Alexis Saint-Martin, whose body becomes a prisoner of the research of an American doctor named William Beaumont. .
A fortuitous event
Does it take a moment in history to freeze the body of Quebec trapper Alexis Saint-Martin, born in Berthier in 1794, as an object of scientific covetousness for the world of medical researchers? In fact, it was a simple rifle bullet received during a hunting incident on June 6, 1822, which caused the appearance of a fistula, or an opening in his chest, allowing his stomach to be seen. with the naked eye. From then on, its fate was cast, and this astonishing opening favored new discoveries, but the body found itself subject to scientific scrutiny.
Nothing disposed Alexis Saint-Martin, a free man, a vigorous trapper and still young at the time of the incident, to frequent the medical world. At the beginning of the 19the century, in the countryside of Quebec, recourse to the man of the art or to doctors is not so frequent. Some of them struggle to be recognized, colliding with the many healers who still have the confidence of many, as is the case with the ramancheurs, who replace the disjointed bones and whose practice extends over many long family lines whose knowledge is respected.
So, had it not been for this bullet piercing him, Alexis Saint-Martin would undoubtedly have had very few opportunities to have recourse to a doctor in his life. But now, running the woods in the United States, in the State of Michigan, in the service of the American Fur company, he risks dying of this tragic injury.
First, there is the bullet hampering his destiny, then, in an astonishing twist, it is an American military doctor, William Beaumont (1785-1853), who narrowly saves his life. The man is not an eminent researcher. He practices medicine with soldiers and most often intervenes in desperate causes, without any medical refinement resembling an avant-garde practice, far from it. At that time, this man had almost no chance of being recognized by his peers. But the impossible happens and Alexis Saint-Martin’s stomach, offered to his gaze, gives him a unique opportunity to make his mark. He won’t miss it.
The humble trapper therefore allows this doctor linked to the American army to become a renowned scientific researcher. Dr. Beaumont’s research on the human stomach is noticed throughout the scientific world. The unfortunate Alexis Saint-Martin, however, is not entitled to many respects. From then on, he nourishes a real resentment towards the one who now wants control of his body.
A prisoner body
In fact, Doctor Beaumont arrogates to himself the right to put the body of Alexis Saint-Martin at his entire service. He even pays the latter to ensure his collaboration and goes so far as to impose on him often alienating experiments allowing him to observe the functioning of his stomach and gastric juice. The researcher thus attaches food to a thread in the stomach of Alexis Saint-Martin. He forces her not to move for hours, lying on a table, half-naked, in order to facilitate her experiments.
The poor man is dazed, tired, anxious. Regardless, Dr. Beaumont’s research must continue. In fact, the doctor would have engaged in more than 230 experiments on the body of Alexis Saint-Martin. At the end of his experiments, the doctor achieves glory and the trapper sinks into terrible oblivion.
Subjected for a time to the influence of the scientist, the body of Alexis Saint-Martin is not freed from its status as a guinea pig at the end of the experiment. In short, he remains observed. Particularly by the world press, which presents him as a miserable and alcoholic French Canadian when they deign to speak about him. He remains constantly harassed by Doctor Beaumont, who wants him near him and even offers him to remain in his service for good.
Besides, so many other medical specialists want to see his fistula. They’re willing to pay him to expose it. Alexis Saint-Martin travels to Europe, to London, to show it to scientists, and even to the general public. However, he simply wants to return to live on the land he owns, in Saint-Thomas de Joliette, and be a farmer. But he cannot, being always asked to expose his fistula which, moreover, never closes, even with time. In a document published under the title “Four Letters of Alexis Saint-Martin », we note that the man is still trying to push back, in a letter dated 1879, on the eve of his death, the requests of a renowned American doctor seeking to observe his fistula.
The trapper is not, however, a poor man. He knows how to write. He made a good living as a trapper until his unfortunate injury. However, he never manages to get out of this terrible submission to science, even being married and the father of several children. Constantly his momentum of life is slowed down by demands requiring him to be only an observed being. It is the sad fate, in fact, of a man whose body is imprisoned.
A real downfall
Alexis Saint-Martin does not make a fortune thanks to the exposure of his fistula. He does receive a salary from Doctor Beaumont, but only for a while. His wish not to be approached by the latter leaves him in cruel poverty. He comes to show his fistula in public exhibitions, but without getting much financially. A commercial company even offers him to associate his fistula with his projects to promote vegetarian food, but he refuses to allow his body to become an advertising vehicle.
Everything turns absurd after his death, which occurred on June 24, 1880, when he was 86 years old. His family, harassed during Alexis Saint-Martin’s lifetime by the demands of scientists, came to want to hide the body of the latter on the occasion of his funeral. Moreover, a rumor circulates that an American doctor wants to buy the body in order to then exhibit it in a museum, which worries those close to Alexis Saint-Martin.
Finally, the body of poor Alexis waits four days to be buried and, in the middle of summer, he comes to exhale foul odors. It was then decided to bury him in a discreet location in the cemetery of Saint-Thomas de Joliette, without any tombstone. Over time, the burial place was forgotten, and no one now knows where the body was buried.
In 1962, the Canadian Physiological Society offered a commemorative plaque to Alexis Saint-Martin, where the inscription, in English, pays particular homage to Doctor Beaumont. Even in his death, Alexis’ body is humiliated, almost outraged, dispossessed of itself and even of its language.
Ethical issues
The story of Alexis Saint-Martin had an echo in the 19e century. Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovarystill makes fun of it in a passage of his book Bouvard and Pécuchet, speaking of “the Canadian of Beaumont”. For a while, popular memory was not kind to this trapper, whose famous fistula nevertheless allowed unexpected scientific discoveries, and this, well before the existence of X-rays. In fact, in our XXIe century, this memory seems very distant, and almost no one knows the name of Alexis Saint-Martin any more, even in Quebec.
It should be thought that, nowadays, the sad experiment of man-guinea pig of Alexis Saint-Martin could not reproduce. But his difficult human experience shows us the need to recognize the merits of a being whose human body is offered to science, with the obligation to respect it within the framework of the research protocol. If it is allowed to question, rightly, the scientific experimentation made with animals, that made with a human being, as in the case of Alexis Saint-Martin, can still concern us. All his life, this man rebelled against his fate as a guinea pig, which almost completely deprived him of the right to lead a normal life.
His experience is not lacking in ethical lessons. The protection of human rights is sometimes more important than the wishes of a science which, a bit like Doctor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s famous novel, could risk making the creature under investigation a real victim. Should we make scientific discoveries while not respecting human life and seeking only the absolute of a result? The sad life experience of Alexis Saint-Martin eloquently shows us that it is better not to go down this path.