The Medical Experiments of Dr. Beaumont: A Mini-Essay

     During a trapping expedition in the spring of 1822, a near-fatal accident gave an army doctor the medical profession’s first look at the human digestive system. During a night of drunken revelry, nineteen-year-old Alexis St. Martin accidentally shot himself in the stomach and Dr. William Beaumont quickly rushed to his aid. Pushing the vital organs back into the wound and picking out bits of shattered ribs, Beaumont treated the injury and St. Martin made a miraculous recovery.[1] During the healing process, the patient’s stomach attached to the inner lining of his chest wall and created a small aperture which allowed the doctor direct access to the organ. Over the months that followed, Beaumont took advantage of the opportunity and utilized St. Martin as a living experiment. The doctor would insert food, attached to a silk thread, into the aperture and retrieve it at planned intervals to study the digestive process.[2] While Beaumont’s finding revolutionized the medical field’s understanding of the human body, the studies transformed St. Martin into a medical curiosity and, after a heated argument, doctor and patient parted ways.[3] The incident catapulted Beaumont to fame and he published the results of his 238 studies in a massive text titled Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. St. Martin, though, was not so lucky and financial troubles brought him back to the doctor in 1831 to resume experimentations in exchange for payment.[4] As before, the relationship was quickly strained and, in 1834, St. Martin fled to Canada, where he hid from the medical community for the remainder of his life.[5] 

Works Referenced

White, John. American Vignettes: A Collection of Footnotes to History. Convent Station, NJ: Travel Vision, 1976.
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[1] White, 24.
[2] White, 25.
[3] White, 25-26.
[4] White, 26.
[5] White, 26.

Day of the Dead Ribbon Wreath

$15 - $20 (based on 2017 prices)

Makes one wreath

The Dia de Los Muertos portion of 2017’s haunted house required dozens of wreaths and flowers for an intricate funeral scene. To prevent myself from using the same design for each prop, I did variations on the sugar skull motif. For this version, I decided to subtly incorporate skulls through the ribbon and use bright flowers to highlight the holiday’s use of vibrant colors.

• One twelve-inch willow wreath
• Thirty to forty pink artificial carnations
• Three of each: pink, red, white, and yellow artificial roses
• Four yards of Halloween-themed ribbon

1. Cover the wreath in a dense arrangement of pink carnations. You want the covering to be thick enough to blanket the entire structure, but not too crowded that the roses and ribbon cannot be wedge between the carnations.

2. Adhere the roses to the wreath. You can use an alternating pattern like the one pictured to create balance or a random placement for an arresting asymmetry. Likewise, you can produce varying levels of visual interest by either selecting multiple colors or one single color for the roses.

3. Weave the ribbon around the wreath. You can wrap it in a simple spiral design or make more elaborate shapes by cutting the ribbon into sections and twisting them into the carnations.

4. If the wreath did not come with hanging loops, you can fashion one with steel wire.

5. You could add further embellishments by incorporating colorful beads, exotic feathers, or glittery branches into the wreath's design. 

"A Last Word" (A Poem)

The Late-Victorian poet and novelist Ernest Dowson is little known today outside of serious literary circles. In fact, Dowson's undistinguished career is just one of the many elements of his tragic life. He lost both of his parents to tuberculosis, failed to win the hand of his love, uncompleted his degree at Queen’s College in Oxford, struggled to find a major audience for his writing, and passed away a penniless alcoholic at the age of thirty-two.[1] As a child of the Decadent Movement, which originated in France and championed artificiality and excess, the writer, like many of his decadent peers, articulated the dark mood of the late nineteenth century in the sober tones of his work, including “A Last Word.”[2] Unlike his literary counterparts, Dowson, as Oscar Wilde laments, used the stark misfortune of his own life to fuel the sad undertones of his works’ bleak messages.[3]

Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
The day is overworn, the birds all flown;
And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown;
Despair and death; deep darkness o'er the land,
Broods like an owl; we cannot understand
Laughter or tears, for we have only known
Surpassing vanity: vain things alone
Have driven our perverse and aimless band.
Let us go hence, somewhither strange and cold,
To Hollow Lands where just men and unjust
Find end of labour, where's rest for the old,
Freedom to all from love and fear and lust.
Twine our torn hands! O pray the earth enfold
Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust.[4]

Works Referenced

Adams, Jad. Madder Music, Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson, Poet and Decadent. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2002.

Dowson, Ernest. “A Last Word.” The Poems of Ernest Dowson. London: Ballantyne, Hanson and Company, 1905. 166.

Shrimpton, Nicholas. “Later Victorian Voices I: James Thomson, Symons, Dowson, Lionel Johnson, Houseman.” The Cambridge History of English Poetry. Ed. Michael O’Neill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 686-705.
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[1] Adams, xi-x.
[2] Shrimpton, 687-689.
[3] Adams, 105.
[4] Dowson, 166.

Clown Pumpkins

$30 - $40 (based on 2017 prices)

Makes three pumpkins

The farm theme for 2016’s haunt left me with numerous pumpkins and I have spent the last few years finding ways to repurpose them. As I worked on the twisted circus idea for my office, I thought it would be interesting to transform a few into clowns (one of the two clown-related props I built for that concept).

• Three lighted jack-o-lanterns (roughly twelve inches in diameter)
• One 10 oz. can of interior/exterior, fast-drying spray paint in glossy white
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat black*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat blue*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat green*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat orange*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat red*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat yellow*
• One 0.64 oz. bag of pom poms in varying colors and sizes
• Two cone-shaped party hats
• One 4 oz. bottle of all-purpose tacky glue*
  

1. Remove the lights and their electrical cords from the pumpkins and, on a newspaper-line surface in a well-ventilated area, give each prop three even coats of white spray paint. I used three; however, you may use more or less based on your preferences.

2. Detail the pumpkins with polychromatic paints. Your faces can be as fanciful of frightening as you choose. If you struggle with drawing, find templates online and use a pencil to lightly sketch their patterns. Once the paint has dried, outline the designs with black paint to enhance the colors.

3. Glue multicolored pom poms to the stems to create hair. To achieve a tapered shape, graduate upward from largest to smallest. You could also use party hats or wigs for an alternate look.

4. You could give the pumpkins further detail by adhering bowties, fake noses, and glasses for more whimsy or blood splatters, plastic insects, and severed body parts for a more frightening appearance.

*You will not use the entire bottle’s content for this project.