Innovation Out of Devastation
12:09. We had only six minutes to drive back to school before our next class period would begin, and we were at least ten minutes away. The only thing that separated us from our high school was downtown Rochester, which was a gauntlet of lane closures, distracted pedestrians, and potholes the size of sinkholes. I gripped the steering wheel and swore when the stoplight in front of us changed from green to red in an instant, practically skipping yellow. The car skidded to a stop, and I let out a sigh.
“It’ll be okay. You know that Ms. Ryan is pretty lenient with tardies,” Gustav, my then-boyfriend, now-fiancé, said while handing me the smoothie that we spent our lunch period getting.
“I guess. I just don’t want to be late,” I muttered after taking a sip, eyes fixed on the traffic light.
I expected him to respond with his usual “We won’t be,” but he didn’t. Surprised, I glanced over at him and saw him looking up at the Mayo Building, a sight that was no stranger to either of us. Gustav was born at the Mayo Clinic, raised only two miles away from the building, and watched Rochester grow alongside him. Meanwhile, I only drove my mother, who worked as a research admin in the connected Gonda Building, to and from work on my way to school.
I turned my attention towards to stoplight just in time to see it turn green, and as I lurched the car forward, Gustav faced forward and murmured, “Funny.”
“What?” I asked.
“I just think it’s funny that that’s the pinnacle of modern medicine, the reason that millions of people travel here, and yet we just drove past it like it was nothing. How is that not a big deal to us?” he pondered.
I wanted to respond with something about how we’ve become accustomed to it because it’s a landmark that we’ve grown up next to, but before I could, I caught a glimpse of the time and realized that I was going to have to focus more on driving than his question if we were going to make it back in less than four minutes. However, I couldn’t help but wonder why the Mayo Clinic was nothing impressive to us whenever I drove past that famed building.
Now, almost a year later, I find myself in Winona, a college town about an hour east of Rochester. There are numerous connections between these two cities, some of which I’ve only realized after moving here to attend university. Here, a majority of the students who go to Winona State University are from Rochester, some of whom even graduated from the same high school as me. Almost all of these students have at least one parent who works for the Mayo Clinic, like me. Meanwhile, Rochester is the home to Winona State University’s second campus, which is located only a few blocks away from the Mayo Clinic. There, students enrolled in nursing programs are able to work alongside Mayo medical staff in order to gain experience in their specialized fields.
Clearly, the Mayo Clinic has made its mark on Winona, along with many towns like it. Nevertheless, I remained unfazed by its notoriety. It was still, in my mind, nothing more than a building that I drove by on my way to and from school (and on the occasional smoothie run). Curious as to how the Mayo Clinic gained its fame, I decided to do some research and dug through the archives to find what I could about the Mayo Clinic’s humble beginnings.
William Worrall Mayo, a British tailor, came to the United States in 1846. In New York, Mayo took a job as a chemist, or modern-day pharmacist, at Bellevue hospital. However, due to the unsanitary conditions of the hospital, Mayo soon left for Lafayette, Indiana, where he eventually gained his doctorate. At the time, malaria was a widespread disease in Lafayette, one which Dr. Mayo and his wife contracted multiple times during their stay. Fed up with the mosquitoes who carried the disease, the Mayo family soon relocated to Minnesota in 1854.
Two years after the start of the American Civil War, Dr. Mayo took the position of examining surgeon and was assigned to move himself and his family to Rochester in 1863. There, in January of 1864, Dr. Mayo opened a private medical practice, one which his sons, William James and Charles Horace, would later join as physicians.
The growth of the Mayo Clinic began with an event that would leave one-third of Rochester in ruins. In August of 1883, an F5 tornado tore through the town, causing 37 deaths and over 200 injuries. The Mayo family, having barely escaped injury themselves, rushed to assist victims. Dr. Mayo and his son, William James, treated those with life-threatening injuries while his other son, Charles Horace, focused on patients with minor wounds. Overwhelmed by the number of patients, Dr. Mayo called upon the Sisters of Saint Francis, a local nunnery, to act as nurses, despite a majority of them having little to no medical knowledge. Nevertheless, the Sisters assisted the Mayo family in successfully treating the victims of the devastating tornado.
Soon after her time working with Dr. Mayo, Mother Alfred Moes of the sisterhood approached him with the idea of building a permanent hospital in Rochester. This hospital, named Saint Mary’s Hospital, was founded by the Sisters of Saint Francis in 1889. After the hospital’s opening, Dr. Mayo and his sons, both of whom had finished medical school by this time, began working there as physicians.
Three years after the foundation of Saint Mary’s Hospital, Dr. Mayo, now in his seventies, retired from practicing medicine. Augustus Stinchfield, whom Dr. Mayo labeled as the ‘best doctor in the area’, was asked to fill Dr. Mayo’s position, which he gladly accepted. Following Dr. Mayo’s retirement, Henry Plummer joined the hospital and implemented features that would result in the hospital’s patient infection rates to decline, something rarely seen in hospitals at the time.
Saint Mary’s Hospital’s success warranted the addition of a new building, the Mayo Red Building, in 1914. This building, along with the hospital, would become part of the Mayo Properties Association, which was founded by Plummer, Stinchfield, and others after Dr. Mayo’s death in 1911. The Mayo Properties Association, later renamed the Mayo Clinic Foundation in 1920, was a non-profit medical practice to which William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo, also known as the Mayo brothers, donated supplies and funds. These donations, along with many others, were put towards the construction of the Mayo Institute of Experimental Medicine in 1922, the Plummer Building in 1927, the Mayo Clinic Building in 1954, and the Gonda Building in 2002, further expanding the Mayo Clinic’s legacy.
The Mayo Clinic has contributed to many medical and scientific discoveries during the 155 years since its foundation. In 1950, two Mayo Clinic employees were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine/Physiology for their discovery of Cortisone. In 2015, over 2,700 research protocols were reviewed and over 11,000 human research studies were commenced, leading to over 7,300 research publications. In 2016, the Mayo Clinic was ranked as the #1 hospital in the United States, with departments such as Endocrinology, Neurology, and others being ranked #1 as well. Despite all of these discoveries, studies, and awards, the Mayo Clinic considers its most significant contribution to medicine to be “the developments and implementation of the concept of integrated, multi-specialty physician-led group medical practice”.
Today, the Mayo Clinic has three main locations: Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida; and Phoenix, Arizona. Between these locations, the Mayo Clinic has almost 60,000 employees, from surgeons to secretaries. Every year, 1.3 million patients come from all 50 states and over 150 countries to be treated by the Mayo Clinic, including royalty from many countries such as Saudi Arabia. Students flock to one of the five schools in the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science to receive graduate-level training in their selected field and to join the next generation of medical professionals, just like Dr. Mayo.
Medicine is constantly moving forwards, but it is important to look back at the history of one of the most innovative foundations in medical history. The Mayo Clinic continues to impact the medical world by making new discoveries and creating new techniques to improve the lives of millions. However, the Mayo Clinic would not have the legacy that it does if it weren’t for Dr. William Worrall Mayo, a man determined to use his medical knowledge to assist others and advance medicine. Seeing that his 200th birthday will be celebrated on May 31st, it’s important to remember the man who gave so much not only to modern medicine but also to the city of Rochester, lest he is forgotten.
With the school year coming to an end, I expect to move back home to Rochester. I’ll once again be able to go on smoothie runs with Gustav, this time without a time limit. When we do, we’ll take the long route so we can discover the new additions to our developing city. When we find ourselves downtown, I plan on going out of my way and stopping at the stoplight next to the Mayo Building. Maybe I’ll ask him if he remembers the time he asked me why we aren’t impressed by having the center of the medical world right next to us. Knowing that he’ll most likely remember, I’ll share the story of Dr. William Worrall Mayo, all while hoping that the red light doesn’t switch to green. However, once it does, we’ll drive away from the Mayo Building, but we won’t leave it behind us.
