William Worrall Mayo
William Worrall Mayo | |
---|---|
Salford, Lancashire, England | |
Died | March 6, 1911 Rochester, Minnesota, U.S. | (aged 91)
Alma mater | University of Missouri |
Occupations | |
Known for | Establishing the Mayo Clinic |
Spouse |
Louise Abigail Wright
(m. 1851) |
Children | 5, including Charles Horace Mayo and William James Mayo |
Member of the Minnesota State Senate | |
In office 1891–1895 | |
17th Mayor of Rochester, Minnesota | |
In office 1882–1883 | |
Preceded by | Samuel Whitten |
Succeeded by | Orson Sage Porter |
William Worrall Mayo (May 31, 1819 – March 6, 1911) was an English medical doctor and chemist. He is best known for establishing the private medical practice that later evolved into the Mayo Clinic. His sons, William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo, established a joint medical practice in Rochester in the U.S. state of Minnesota in the 1880s.
Early life
William Worrall Mayo was born May 31, 1819, in
Mayo spent a brief period of time in Buffalo, New York, before settling in Lafayette, Indiana, where he worked as a tailor (one of the vocations he had while in England). He returned to medicine in 1849, assisting in a cholera outbreak and then attending courses at Indiana Medical College in La Porte, Indiana. Although the training there would probably be considered mediocre by modern standards, the school did have a microscope, an uncommon tool at the time. Knowledge of how to use this instrument proved to be useful in Mayo's future practice. It is a matter of debate whether Mayo actually graduated from the Indiana Medical College. William Mayo reportedly stated orally that he graduated from the Indiana Medical College. His graduation date from the Indiana Medical College has been reported as February 14, 1850. However, no documentation of his graduation exists and he is not listed in the Indiana Medical School list of graduates for that year. He then attended and graduated from the University of Missouri on February 28, 1854, with a degree in medicine.
Migrating west
In 1851, Mayo married Louise Abigail Wright (December 23, 1825 – July 15, 1915), and two years later, they had their first child, Gertrude. Around this time, Mayo left for a winter to work as an assistant at the University of Missouri's medical department. He returned in 1854, but contracted malaria and decided to leave the Lafayette area, saying, "I'm going to keep on driving until I get well or die." Mayo found his way to Minnesota, which he thought would have a more healthful climate and where he did recover from malaria. He settled in Saint Paul, but returned to Indiana a short time later to bring his family to the Minnesota territory. Mayo then found his way to the present-day area of Duluth where he worked as a census-taker.
He brought his family to a village named Cronan's Precinct (near
After a flood in 1859, the family moved to a home on Main Street in Le Sueur, now known as the Dr. William W. Mayo House. There, he set up his first official medical practice, but the flow of patients was too meager to support the family. Mayo took to publishing a short-lived newspaper, the Le Sueur Courier, which only lasted about three months. He also spent time working on a steamboat. The family saw its first male addition, William James Mayo, in 1861.
As the
Rochester
On April 24, 1863, Mayo was named examining surgeon for the first Minnesota draft board headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota. He left his family for that position and soon found the new city to his liking, so they joined him there in early 1864. A year later, his son Charles Horace Mayo was born.
Mayo opened a solo medical practice in Rochester in 1863. He partnered with W. A. Hyde from February to June 1864 before going back to solo practice. In November 1867, Mayo entered into a partnership with pharmacist O. W. Anderson, which lasted until November 1869 when Mayo left heading for
The event that is usually credited with beginning the "Mayo Clinic Story" happened on
Mayo Clinic
In 1892, Mayo asked Augustus Stinchfield to join his practice as a full partner. Once Stinchfield accepted the offer, Mayo retired at age 73. As the practice grew, Christopher Graham, E. Starr Judd, Henry Stanley Plummer, Melvin Millet, and Donald Balfour were also invited to join it as partners. In 1919, the partners of the private practice created the Mayo Properties Association and established the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research as a not-for-profit entity.
In 1910, Mayo became interested in the extraction and distillation of alcohol from animal and vegetable wastes, and one day suffered a serious injury when the extraction mechanism crushed his arm and hand. That injury necessitated an amputation. Complications resulted in his death in March 1911, shortly before Mayo's 92nd birthday. His wife died in 1915. They are buried next to each other at Oakwood Cemetery in Rochester.
The family's home in Le Sueur was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969. Carson Nesbit Cosgrove and his family later lived in the home. Cosgrove went on to help create the Minnesota Valley Canning Company, later named Green Giant. Mayo's home in Rochester was razed to build the original Mayo Clinic building in 1914.
References
- ^ Martindale, Don (1966). Institutions, Organizations, and Mass Society. Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 491.
- .
- PMID 14972208.
- ISBN 9780525561675.
- ISBN 978-5-555-50282-7pp. 77-78.
- ^ "Minnesota Legislators Past & Present - Legislator Record - Mayo, William Worrall". Leg.state.mn.us. Retrieved 2010-09-04.
Sources
- "W.W. Mayo House: Where innovation took root". Minnesota Historical Society. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
- Clapesattle, Helen. The Doctors Mayo, University of Minnesota Press (1975). ISBN 0-8166-0465-7
- Hartzell, Judith. "I Started All This: The Life of Dr. William Worrall Mayo", Arvi Books (2004). ISBN 0-9703569-1-9
- Mayo, Charles W. "Mayo: The Story of My Family and My Career," Doubleday and Company (1968)
- Eddy-Schultz, Fern. La Porte County Historian, La Porte, Indiana.
- Mayo Clinic website. http://history.mayoclinic.org/timelines/this-month-in-our-history.php