William Beaumont had grown up with the idea that he would be famous. But as the army surgeon at a fort in the wilderness of Mackinac Island, Michigan Territory, he felt that life was passing him by.

Then, on June 6, 1822, there was a shooting accident in the village near the fort that would radically alter the course of Beaumont's life. Alexis St. Martin, a hardy frontiersman in the fur trade, had been shot, leaving a hole in his stomach that would never close up, even after Dr. Beaumont had healed him. Through that hole, a clear passageway into the stomach from outside the body, the doctor decided to perform experiments on digestion, which had been a mystery to science for centuries. If his experiments succeeded, he would win the kind of fame he'd dreamed of.

How William Beaumont won an enduring place in history through his remarkable discoveries on digestion is the basis of a fascinating story. Sam and Beryl Epstein's well-researched text is accompanied by Joe Scrofani's illustrations showing the frontier setting and the characters in rich detail.

From the dust jacket