Beaumont was a U.S. army surgeon who used the permanent fistula in the stomach of a young French Canadian solder, caused by a gunshot wound, to study digestion. This was the first book printed in Plattsburgh and a vital contribution to understanding of the subject, described by Horblit as "the greatest single contribution to the knowledge of gastric digestion" and in Norman as "a remarkable example of brilliant investigation performed under the almost primitive conditions of an isolated Army outpost on the American frontier."