THE growth and development of the Mayo Clinic is one of the romances of medicine. In 1845 a young English chemist, William Worrall Mayo, emigrated to the United States and settled in New York, where for some years he taught physics and chemistry. Moving later to Indiana, he commenced the study of medicine, and eventually qualified at the University of Missouri in 1854. After serving in the Civil War as a surgeon, he came to live in the small town of Rochester, in the State of Minnesota, where his abilities as a doctor were soon recognized.
In 1883, however, something occurred which, in the light of subsequent events, was to have a profound effect on the work of Dr. Mayo and his two sons. In that year a cyclone passed over the small town, and a large number of people were killed and injured. There was no hospital to deal with the casualties, and the responsibility for the care of the sick and injured fell on the shoulders of Dr. Mayo. Some years later, and it can be said almost certainly as the result of the unfortunate experience of 1883, a small forty-bed hospital was built by the Order of St. Francis, under the direction of Dr. Mayo and his two sons-Drs. William and Charles Mayo. From this humble beginning, therefore, has developed what is now the world-famous Mayo Clinic.
Just as a stranger visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time senses at once the University atmosphere, so does one in Rochester realize that this is the Mayo Clinic. The Clinic itself in the centre of the town, towering over the surrounding buildings ; hotels full of convalescent patients and their relatives ; the uniformed nurses hurrying to and from the various hospitals-all leave the visitor in no doubt as to where he is. Even a part of one of the leading hotels has been converted into a temporary hospital !
The present Clinic building, opened in 1929 on the site of Dr. Mayo's original home, is a fine imposing structure situated in the middle of the town (Fig. 491).