Bedside Rounds

Alexis St. Martin and William Beaumont have one of the strangest relationships in the history of medicine -- a young French-Canadian fur trapper with a hole in his stomach from an errant shotgun blast and the American army physician who cared for him, and then made his own career by turning Alexis into a human guinea pig. Through the decades of their complicated relationship, they’d revolutionize our understanding of the physiology of the stomach, put American medicine on the map, and start a conversation about the ethics of human experimentation that goes on to this day. Plus there’s a new #AdamAnswers about whether or not your body temperature and fevers can “run low”. All this and more on the latest episode of Bedside Rounds, a tiny podcast about fascinating stories in clinical medicine.   Sources:   Beaumont W. Experiments and Observations of the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. Plattsburgh, NY: FP Allen; 1833. Mackowiak PA et al, “A critical appraisal of 98.6 degrees F, the upper limit of