The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-08-26
The Mayo Brothers
And Their Great Work
AND THE HOSPITAL MAKES
TOWN FAMOUS
Their Name Has Gone Forth to the
Whole Neutrality-suspicious. and Pa
tients From All Parts of the United
States.

James J. Walsh, Md, Phi. D., dean |
of Fordham University, was engaged |
by The Independent to go to Roch- |
ester MINI. and make a special study |
of the work of the Mayo Brothers.
perhaps the two greatest American
notes. |
.'Just twenty years ago." says Dr..
Walsh, "a cyclone struck the little
town of Rochester, Mimi, at that
time containing probably less than
| 5000 inhabitants. More than two
score people were killed and a large
number were injured. There was
no hospital in the town, so that the
| injured, of whom there were a great
many, had to be housed In various
public buildings, 2 to be cared for by
| the devotion of the charitably incl1n-
| ed Many of the injured children
were taken into the academy OF the
Franciscan Sisters, founded only
few years before. The sisters vol
| unteered as nurses in certain of the
public buildings where the injured
were being cared for.g When Roch-
ester recovered from the cyclone 1T
was realized that a hospital was need
! ed, dist. Mary's hospital in charge
the following year. and its twentieth
iannual report is the last publ1shed.
| 1.-The story that I have to tell, then,
| is how this little hospital in a little
western town has grown to be a very
center of attraction, has enlarged and
again enlarged it's facilities until now
| it can accommodate zoo patients, and
these patients come from all over the
country. Besides patients, 1T has
| constant attendance of score or
| more of visiting physicians repre-
senting during a single year probably
all the states of the Union and some
foreign countries who have come to
see for themselves the work that Is
l. -
being done and study how such good
results are being obtained.
/ "Thes history of this little hospf-
/ tai at Rochester is worth while trac-
ing. At first it was placed in
charge of a country practitioner, who
did all sorts Of medical work, and
| cumstances. He was past seventy
| when he took up this work, and old
i DR.. Mayo is still alive at the age. Of
ninety-two. His two boys, raised on
the farm-there are some great
things raised on farms besides the or
I binary farm products-got an intro
duction to medicine in their fathers
i office and then went off to medical
4 schools. DIR. Will, the older, grad
i uated at the University of Michigan,
people call them by any but these
names yet, and patients and their
friends are not in town more than
three days before they take up the
naD1t D4sWenC the n6QlCdl. ScEOOl fOI
Northwestern University, Illinois.
They came back to Rochester, settled
down apparently to the demanding
medical practice Of a town of about
5000 Inhabitants, with the prospect
of long night riding into the sur
rounding country, and work of all
for just the struggling existence and
respectable but not luxurious rewards
. that a busy, faithful practitioner Of
medicine in a small town is likely to
secure. Within that same decade
! of the eighties there were probably
down under just the same conditions
and their future has not belied that
prospect. The Mayo boys, were diff
. ferent, however, and very soon that
not that they were so brilliant, but
i. they were ambitious in the right way
eager to learn and able to take and
make chances to learn, solid, faithful
pox s $: US f. ora T. +, +s so,
by the time they had been at
work for ten years their names had
become familiar to every one doing
serious surgical work in America, and
, it gradually became the custom for
a certain number of younger ambi-
tious surgeons at least to take their
vacations in Rochester and see the
| Mayos do their work Those vaca-
: | tons were schools in both the Latin
land Greek sense OIL these terms. In
/ Greek school means leisure for men
3 tai work, and in Latin vacare rel
means to be free to apply ones self
: to something so that one really gets
t everything there is in a thing out Of
; it. Before long the older surgeons
: were making occasional pilgrimages
: to Rochester, Mimi, because, even if,
E as they probably would have said,
r principles might not be learned
, there, a magnificent hospital organi-
cation could be studied and a fault
: less surgical technique followed with
pleasure Then, when foreign WISH
! tors came to America they wanted to
) get to Rochester. Even Germans
, went; the English went, of course;
a 1.-The Japanese wanted to see the sim
a tple, efficient, thorough organiza ton
which had rendered such good work
possible in a little hospital in small
town. There is the story of the
Mayos in few words. 1t is no won
der that patients have come to them
:, mot only from all the surrounding
; country of the northwest, but from
: probably all the states of the union.
I 'The 200 beds in the hospital are
: kept constantly full, and as patients
: are moved out to convalescent hotels
), lust as soon as their condition will
7 allow it, an average of about fifteen
:, serious operations day are done. 1t
Il lis no wonder, then, that one of the
: trains that comes in from the west
: to Rochester is called "the hospital