Thomas A Becket (1118?-1170)

Thomas a Becket was archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Henry II of England. As archbishop he clashed with the king over the rights of the church against the rights of the crown The conflict led to Thomas' death and made him one of the most famous of English martyrs.

Thomas was born in London, probably on December 21,1118. His father, a merchant, came from Normandy. While in his 20's Thomas entered the service of Theobald, who was then archbishop of Canterbury. In 1154 Thomas was appointed archdeacon of Canterbury. That same year 21-year-old Henry of Anjou came to the English throne as King Henry II. He made Thomas chancellor, or chief official. Thomas served the king faithfully and ably, and a warm friendship grew up between the 2 men. In 1162, after the death of Theobald, Henry offered Thomas the office of archbishop. He accepted reluctantly, fearing that the policies of the strong-willed king would conflict with his own views.

In 1164 the king had a document prepared known as the Constitutions of Clarendon. Its purpose was to restore some of the power of the crown, which had been weakened during the chaotic period before Henry came to the throne. Among other things, it provided that clergymen convicted of crimes by church courts were to be punished by civil courts. Previously, the church had both tried and punished its own member's. Thomas' refusal to sign the document infuriated the king, who had expected his old friend's help. Thomas fled to France. He continued to condemn the Constitutions as a violation of the rights of the church, and he excommunicated two bishops who supported Henry. Finally, in 1170, Thomas and the king were partly reconciled, and Thomas returned to England. But his refusal to lift the ban against the bishops angered the king again. On December 29, 1170, four of Henry's knights murdered Thomas in the cathedral at Canterbury.

Henry denied having ordered or wished Thomas' death. However, he did penance at Thomas' burial place in the cathedral, which at once became a shrine for pilgrims. In 1172 Thomas was made a saint.

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Beaumont, William (1785-1853)

William Beaumont was a frontier surgeon who discovered how the human stomach works. He made his discoveries in a remarkable way: by acquiring a patient with a hole in his stomach. His work ranks as a landmark in medicine. Yet compared with modern doctors, Beaumont had almost no training.

Born on November 21, 1785, in Lebanon, Connecticut, he was one of nine children. His father was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. Young William received some schooling, but no one knows how much. In 1806 he moved to upstate New York, Where he taught school. Here he began to read many books about medicine. Four years later he became an apprentice to a doctor and did everything from sweeping floors to assisting in surgery. That was his first medical training. In 1812 he entered the army as a surgeon's assistant.

When the war of 1812 ended, Beaumont practiced medicine in Vermont for a few years. Then he re-enlisted in the Army and was assigned to Fork Mackinac, an outpost in northern Michigan. Before going west in 1821, he married. In time he and his wife had three children.

Beaumont was post surgeon at the fort. One day in 1822 he was called to treat a wounded French-Canadian Indian named Alexis St. Martin. St. Martin, who was 18, had been accidentally shot. The bullet had exposed his stomach and made a hole in it the size of a man's finger.
Beaumont placed him in the post hospital. There, for almost a year,Beaumont treated the wound and kept St. Martin alive. Later Beaumont took St. Martin into his own home and fed and clothed him.

By 1825 St. Martin was well enough to chop wood, but he still had a hole in his stomach. A small flap had grown over the hole, but it could be easily pushed aside. This meant Beaumont could study a human stomach at work and see how it digested food-if St. Martin would let him. Beaumont made an offer. If St. Martin would serves as a human laboratory, Beaumont would give him food, drink, and lodging.

St. Martin agreed, and Beaumont began 10 years of experiments that were to make him famous. He tied bits of food to string and held them in the opening. This way he learned which foods were most easily digested. Sometime he actually watched the food being digested. He saw how the stomach muscles moved to tear the food apart. He discovered that the stomach produces gastric juice, the fluid that dissolves food. He collected this juice in bottles and noted that it continued dissolve foods there. Beaumont's studies still stand as the greatest single contribution to understanding digestion.

During the years that Beaumont was making his study, the army assigned him to to various posts. But wherever he want, Beaumont took St. Martin along. St. Martin often tired of being a human laboratory; twice he left and went back to Canada.

Beaumont received some help from other scientists and some support from the U.S Government. But the most part he carried on the work on his own. He paid St. Martin's expenses even after St. Martin married and had children. When Beaumont finished writing his classic book about his work, he had to pat for publishing it.

In 1834 St. Martin left for the third time, and Beaumont could not persuade him to return. Still the important discoveries had been made. Beaumont retired from the Army in 1840 and settled in St. Louis as a private doctor. He died on April 25, 1853.

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Beecher, Henry Ward (1813-1887)

Henry Ward Beecher was an American clergyman and one of the most famous preachers of his time. He was born on June 24, 1813, in Litchfield, Connecticut. His father, Lyman Beecher, was a distinguished Presbyterian minister, and four of Henry's brothers also became clergymen. His sister Harriet later won fame ( as Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe) for her novel Uncle Tom's cabin.

In 1834 Beecher graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts. He was not a very good student, mainly because he disliked studying. But he was popular for his friendliness and good nature, traits that remained with him all his life. After graduating from Amherst, he studied at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, of which his father was then president. His first appointment, in 1837, was to a small church in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. That same year he married Eunice White Bullard, who bore him 10 children. From 1839 to 1847 he was pastor of a church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Then he accepted an invitation to become minister of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York.

For almost 40 years, until his death on March 8, 1887, Beecher was minister of Plymouth Church. As his fame grew, so did his congregation. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people came each week to hear him speak on the social and political issues of the day, as well as on religion. He spoke out strongly against slavery championed the right of women to vote. He defended Darwin's theory of evolution, something few other clergymen would then do. His religious views were liberal, and it was said that he preached a religion of the heart. Beecher's appearance was striking. He was strongly built, with a lionlike head and hair that reached to his coat collar. He was a brilliant orator with a fine voice and poetic command of language.

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Bering, Vitus (1680-1741)

In the early years of the 18th century, many people still believed that a bridge of land connected Asia and North America. Bering, Vitus, a Danish sailor working for the Czar of Russia, proved that this land bridge did not exist. Bering was born at Horsens, Denmark, in 1680 or 1681, and joined the Russian Navy when he was 23. In 1724 Czar Peter the Great appointed him to lead an expedition across Russia and Siberia to the peninsula of Kamchatka, north of Japan. Here Bering was to build a ship in which to seek the land bridge.

The long journey across snow-covered Siberia was filled with terrible hardships for the members of the expedition. After more than three years they reached a little village at Kamchatka. Bering built a ship and in 1728 set sail across the uncharted sea. West of Alaska he discovered an island, which he named St. Lawrence Island. Then he sailed north through the strait (now called Bering Strait) separating Asia and North America. The discovery of this strait proved that the two continents were not linked. But heavy fog prevented Bering from seeing the coast of Alaska, 63 kilometers (39 miles) away.

Bering return to Russia in 1730 to plan a second expedition. In 1741 he sailed from Kamchatka with two ships, the St. Peter and the St. Paul. On July 16, while he was gazing at the horizon from the deck of the St. Peter, Bering saw a jagged coastline and a lofty mountain range. He had discovered Alaska. He named the highest mountain peak Mount Saint Elias. However, bad weather made further exploration difficult, and Bering and many of his men were ill. Violent storms drove the St. Peter back toward Asia and wrecked the ship on a desert island off the coast of Kamchatka. Here, on December 8, 1741, Bering died and was buried. The island and the sea he had explored were named after him.

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