Beaumont High School - Caduceus Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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SITE OF BEAUIVIONT By PETER BRAROE WISH it were possible to name incidents thrilling with historical signiiicance that have occurred on K the site of Beaumont, but in so far as I am enabled to determine, there were no Indian massacres, no battles, nor even noted residences, or other details of like interest to which we can point proudly as hoary traditions of our possession. Never- theless, the school stands on ground suffi- ciently varied in its habitation. Once the plot was a part of the vast Henri Chouteau estate that bordered on the Lindell place to the East. Some Hfty years or more ago the virgin soil was dis- turbed to become a truck farm, a rural manufactory of vegetables for St. Louis. Thereon it continued until the advent of the city's first baseball magnate, Von Der Abe, who established on it a baseball park for the use of his own team. While the place was yet new, another man of enter- prise, Foster, induced the owner to allow him to open a race track and a chute-the- chutes, and to make it a general amusement center in correlation. It must have been a busy, thriving insti- tution, indeed. In the afternoons the ball games were carried on, At night you would perceive bright and shining lights: you would hear a gay uproar and feminine shrieks from the chute-the-chutes, That, I might say, was a steep inclined railway with a large flat boat that rushed down to skim over a pool of water. All of the horse racing happened at night, a novel custom, -The Browns' Baseball Team began at Grand and Dodier, Sportsman's Park in the eighties, It moved to Vandeventer and Natural Bridge in '92 or '93. It played there under the name of the Browns until '99, when it was purchased by Robinson and the name changed to Cardinals. About live years ago the National League abandoned the ground and moved to Sportsman's Park. A real estate company improved the ground to the extent of sewers and a paved street through the center and constructed two houses at the western end. The project was left unfinished when the Board of Education bought it for its present com- mendable purpose. Eleven

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Xl l i 'i E ' 1 - 4, V an wr , H- ,, ,, f Yi ' jE?aLgg, ply ,g:'?? Aff' :E X T I-I E C A D U C E U S in the store of the American Fur Company to buy or sell buckskins, moccasins, flan- nels, and gaudy neckbands, when of a sudden a gun was accidentally discharged. The victim was St. Martin Alexis, a French Canadian. In the left side of his chest, at the sixth rib, a hole was torn, so large that the lung protruded, and also the stomach, with a hole in it large enough to admit a forefinger. After months of care, although bone, cartilage, and soft tissues sloughed away, the man recovered, but the stomach was tightly adhered to the ab- dominal walls, and still had a large hole in it. This case developed, and, two years later, Beaumont began a series of experi- ments on the properties of the stomach, effects of mastication and insalivation, and the comparative digestibility of different articles of food. These experiments were published in 1833 in a book entitled Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice, and the Physiology of Diges- tion, and immediately the book was translated into French and German. The full importance of his work can be seen when one considers the fact that, up to this time, the knowledge of digestion was very meager and uncertain, and that, with the exception of the discovery of pepsin, the closest research of modern times has added little to the facts established by him. In 1840, his brilliant military career of more than twenty-five years was termi- nated. He established a large and lucrative practice in St. Louis, living in a beautiful country home situated in a section now between Jefferson Avenue and Beaumont Street fnear Olive Streetj, and enjoyed it so much that he spoke of it as follows: A few things only seem wanting to make it a paradise. Beaumont was prominent in the St. Louis Medical Society, serving as president in 1841. His final years found him still devoted to his family, his friends, and his work, from which he passed away in March, 1853, as a result of a fall on the icy pave- ment after a late visit to a patient. Few make Dilgrimages to his grave in Bellefon- taine Cemetery, yet there, with his wife's, lie the remains of a unique and remark- able man. A4 - A ix Ten

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WILBUR N. FULLER