Mayo Brothers Research Articles

Complexity and health – yesterday's traditions, tomorrow's future

‘If it is complex it means we don’t really understand it,and the way forward is to break the problem down into its partsto make sense of it’. This thought reflects the way we havebeen taught, and the way we largely practise in clinical care everyday.But are we really functioning on this basis? Or is it the only waywe know how to live? We all experience situations every daywhere the evidence does not really fit our understanding of aproblem – the familiar reductionist approach limits our ability tofully explore new problems and to gain new insight. An increas-ingly persistent question has emerged in relation to what consti-tutes the knowledge we need for effective and efficient clinicalcare, an issue taken up by this new

William and Charles Mayo: Their Influence on American Medicine

In a little-known Midwest town named Rochester, Minnesota, a talented physician grew in fame and respect: Dr. William Worrall Mayo, who was influential in the evolution of medicine. He was a steadfast learner and raised two sons, William and Charles, to follow in his footsteps and further medical knowledge. They were leaders in surgery and in the creation of advanced and sophisticated medical facilities. Their talents, the issues surrounding medical practice, and unexpected opportunity all came into play for the Mayos. Two hospitals, St. Mary's Hospital and later the Methodist Hospital, witnessed and influenced the advancement of medicine through the Mayo Clinic heritage and dynasty in Minnesota and the rest of the world. In this article, we focus on the role of the Mayo brothers and their influence over the increasing acceptance of hospital care in America and abroad.

AHA and HAS Meet at Mayo Clinic

The Department of Anesthesiology at the famous and historic Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, hosted the summer meeting of the Anesthesia History Association, in conjunction with the History of Anaesthesia Society (UK), June 22-24, 2006. The meeting’s theme was using history to teach professionalism; teaching professionalism is a new AGME requirement. Dr. Doug Bacon, head of the Section on History in the Department of Anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic, organized the meeting. Plenary sessions covered important people and events in Mayo Clinic history. Topics included Dr. W.W. Mayo (father of the Mayo brothers Will and Charlie) and the beginning of the clinic, the history of the anesthesiology department and Dr. Will Mayo. This last talk was given at a luncheon at Dr. Will’s lovely house, now called the Foundation House. The home is now used for various meetings. One plenary session, “Mississippi and the Mayo Brothers” by retired Mayo ophthalmologist and retinal surgeon, Dr. Dennis Robertson, was a particular hit. The Mississippi River is about 40 miles east of Rochester. The Mayo brothers each had their own steamboat and often enjoyed cruising on the river with their guests. Dr. Robertson reviewed the history of musical entertainments on steamboats and discussed how Dixieland jazz evolved in this setting. His talk had several interesting audio clips, and he also played his banjo. He has been a jazz musician for many years and still plays in a Dixieland band. A lunch-time session by Dale Smith, Ph.D., (chair of history at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethseda) and Dr. Bacon, suggested ways to use history to teach professionalism. The final plenary session reviewed the history of pain medicine at the Mayo Clinic. The first and third prize winners of the 2005 AHA Resident Essay Contest (both from Baylor College of Medicine) presented toxicity untangled” (Adolph Giesecke, Dallas). Raphael Ortega’s (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston) paper reported on current efforts to restore the Ether Monument in Boston. Two papers on the clinic’s first nurse anesthetists were presented by present Mayo Clinic CRNAs. Posters on CRNA history were also available for viewing on day two of the meeting. An exhibit in the History of Medicine Library recognized previous Mayo Clinic Librarian Tom Keys, who wrote the first definitive book on the history of anesthesia (The History of Surgical Anesthesia, 1945). This was prepared by Librarian Hilary Lane and Selma Calmes, who also gave a paper on how the book came to be written. Tours of the Mayo Clinic were available. The downtown campus, where we met, is huge, beautiful and bustling with patients. The historic Plummer Building, where the history of medicine library is

Andrew Taylor Still and the Mayo brothers: convergence and collaboration in 21st-century osteopathic practice.

Two visionary models of healthcare founded on similar principles and honoring the primacy of the patient emerged from late 19th-century American frontier medicine. Their approaches differed, however. While the Mayo Model of Care emphasized team approach to solving a problem, Dr Still's model of osteopathy took an integrative approach attuned to the specific needs of the body's various systems. The author suggests that it is time to innovatively renew Dr Still's original model of patient care by incorporating some of the time-tested and popular features of the Mayo Model of Care. The author further discusses the advantage osteopathic physicians have over their allopathic counterparts as medical care moves from an organ-specific model to cellular, molecular, and genetic model-adding that there is potential for even greater possibilities for osteopathic medicine when osteopathic principles are applied to larger societal problems.

The Mayo brothers and Harvey Cushing: a review of their 39-year friendship through their personal letters

Mayo Clinic founders, William J. Mayo and Charles H. Mayo, and Harvey W. Cushing were among the most significant pioneers of modem American surgery. A review of their personal correspondence reveals a special relationship among these three individuals, particularly between William Mayo and Cushing. Their interactions within the Society of Clinical Surgery initiated their close personal and professional association, which would endure for 39 years. William Mayo strongly supported Cushing's efforts to develop the specialty of neurological surgery, and Cushing sought Mayo's advice in making important career-related decisions. Their supportive friendship and professional alliance remains an example for future generations of neurological surgeons.

Walls

Within a gentle stone’s throw of my house stands a 30-foot-high limestone wall extending in a serpentine configuration for several hundred feet. It was created almost a century ago as a result of quarrying on behalf of one of the Mayo brothers for the construction of tiger-tooth fences in the vicinity of his country mansion. This wall is a barrier to wind and people, a protection and guarantor of seclusion. I toil in good weather at its base, weeding and tending to perennials. Considerable effort is devoted to removal of chunks of rock, some very large, which from time to time succumb to gravity and crash below crushing anything in their paths. Although this occurrence may be seen in any season, the risk is greatest during the spring thaw. Perhaps as an intended compensation for the danger and damage of rockfalls is the accompanying cascade of countless water droplets from the melting of snow at the cliff’s edge, creating a symphonic tinkling when striking rock, frozen ground, and the skeletal remains of last season’s plants.

From Victor Pauchet to Gaston Labat: The Transformation of Regional Anesthesia from a Surgeon???s Practice to the Physician Anesthesiologist

L ouis Gaston Labat was a pioneer in the world of regional anesthesia. In the early 20th century, he brought to the United States knowledge he had acquired from his mentor, the French surgery professor Victor Pauchet. Labat was one of the founders of the “original” American Society of Regional Anesthesia (1) and the author of Regional Anesthesia: Its Technic and Clinical Application (2), which was considered the definitive textbook on regional anesthesia for at least 30 yr after its publication. The text was one of the first English-language anesthesia books devoted to the practice of regional anesthesia and one of the most popular in the United States at the time. Labat’s book was noted to have a remarkable similarity (3) to Pauchet’s book L’Anesthesie Regionale (4). Yet, no clear comparison of Pauchet and Labat’s work, including both text and illustrations, has been done. Did Labat simply copy Pauchet’s work? Was Labat’s work original and simply an outgrowth of Pauchet’s? Was there some middle ground, where copied elements of Pauchet are noticeable, yet a new and distinctive set of ideas, Labat’s alone, emerged from the pages of Regional Anesthesia?

A Look Into the 21st Century as Viewed by a Mayo Health System Patient Care Executive

The 21st century needs to be dedicated to the broader vision of building healthy communities. The challenge for us as leaders in the communities in which we live and work will be to develop a nondisparate shared vision of health that serves all populations from birth to death. Disparity benchmarks and indicators will be key in order to achieve the U.S. Surgeon General's commitment to eliminate the disparities in health in this new century. Florence Nightingale's 19th century vision of creating an environment of healing--together with the Mayo brothers' primary value that the needs of the patient come first, which were set forth during the same time period--needs to guide us as we embark upon our 21st century journey.

From Osler With Love: The Mayo Brothers' Cosmas and Damian Print

From Osler With Love: The Mayo Brothers' Cosmas and Damian Print

Ein Pionier der operativen Gynäkologie

This year (1993) we want to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the death of the Berlin gynecologist Prof. Paul Ferdinand Strassmann. In the first half of the 20th century, Strassmann was one of the leading specialists of plastic surgery of the female genital tract. Famous gynecologists and surgeons, e.g. the Mayo brothers, visited the Strassmann clinic in the Schumannstrasse with the aim of learn new surgical techniques. The present paper aims to outline particularly the life of Paul F. Strassmann but also his importance in the creation of modern gynecological surgery.

The Mayo Legacy in Medical Education

The Mayo Legacy in Medical Education

The Doctors Mayo and Military Medicine

This paper has described an historical range of seldom known accomplishments that are directly attributable to the Doctors Mayo in the field of military medicine. Military service, selfless dedication, and a sense of genuine patriotism can be recognized and identified as instilled in the Mayo brothers by their father's example of service during the Civil War era. World War I presented an opportunity for the medical profession to receive important recognition and representation at the highest levels of national defense with the organization and establishment of the General Medical Board of the Council of National Defense. From its inception both Mayo brothers became alternating members of the Board's executive committee. Also, during World War I, a Mayo Clinic pathologist, Dr. Louis B. Wilson, pioneered field laboratory services and conducted a special study, at the request of the Surgeon General of the Army, on the caliber of the bullet used at that time. Dr. Wilson's tireless work after the war and dedication helped foster the evolution of the American College of Clinical Pathologists. The Doctors Mayo always kept a feeling of strong personal remembrance of, and gratitude for, the contributions of the American soldier in the cause of world peace and American prosperity. The Doctors Mayo were strategic thinkers when it came to National Defense, and it is with a feeling of almost haunting prophetic significance to consider their timeless wisdom on preparedness as a means to ensure peace.

Donald Church Balfour 1882-1963

Donald Balfour was born August 22, 1882, in Toronto, Canada, and obtained his undergraduate education at the Hamilton Collegiate Institute. He was graduated from the University of Toronto Medical School in 1906. During his internship at the Hamilton City Hospital, he became influenced by Ingersoll Olmstead, a distinguished surgeon, who recommended him to the Mayo brothers. In 1907, he became a junior surgeon and in 1912 head of a section of general surgery. In 1910 he married Carrie Mayo, daughter of William J. Mayo. While displaying an interest in numerous surgical fields (having written extensively on tonsillectomy, thyroid surgery, and biliary surgery), and having devised numerous instruments (abdominal retractor, operating table, operating room mirror), he gradually focused his research and writings to that of gastrointestinal surgery. One of his early papers was a method of performing a safer anastomosis in the rectum by means of a tubestent, the subject of this Classic article. Balfour received recognition from the Mayo Clinic, as well as from numerous national and international organizations. He became director of the Department of Surgery in 1937, and he held honorary fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Edinburgh, and Australasia. He was one of the founders of the World Medical Organization and a charter member of the World Health Organization and of the Central Surgical Association. Balfour died July 25, 1963, in his 81st year.

Past personalities and present problems. The 1971 AANS presidential address.

✓ The president of the AANS relates anecdotes based on the friendship between Harvey Cushing and the Mayo brothers. He discusses and reproduces unfamiliar letters from Dr. Cushing to Dr. William C. MacCarty, the president's father. He also discusses selected contemporary neurosurgical problems such as malpractice suits and fragmentation within the specialty.

Henry Stanley Plummer: A Diversified Genius

It does not take a very high order of experience or sophistication to realize that large institutions are likely to arise not only from the combination of purely fortuitous circumstances but from the drive, skill, capacity, and incentive of one or a few people. The Mayo Clinic is no exception. If one wishes to put his finger on the person who made it into the kind of structure it is now, surprisingly enough it was not the founding Mayo brothers, magnificent surgeons and inspiring teachers that they were. It was Henry Stanley Plummer. He was a frustrated engineer; his father having determined that he should go to medical school, he did. Apparently his heart was never primarily in caring for sick people as such. He probed into the reasons why people got sick. His work in thyroid disease is only now getting the recognition it deserves. He worked out arrangements,

Challenge of the foreign body.

IT IS RECORDED that William J. Mayo, in recalling the early days at Rochester, said of himself and his equally illustrious brother: We were very green and we knew it. The latter half of this sentence furnishes one key to their accomplishments. When the invitation was received to give this lecture, the thought occurred to me that perhaps I might best fulfil the purpose of its distinguished founder were I to present a subject the fundamental knowledge of which is still in bud. Surgeons are not unaware of the extent of ignorance on this subject; therein lies the hope of the future, just as their awareness of ignorance determined in part the growth in skill and knowledge of the Mayo brothers. The subject which I have chosen is the reaction of tissues to foreign bodies. My hope is to define within the limits of my capacity the boundaries of our

The Mayo Brothers

The Mayo Brothers

The Mayo Brothers and Their Clinic

The Mayo Brothers and Their Clinic

Work of the Mayo Brothers

Work of the Mayo Brothers

A SIMPLIFIED HEAT METHOD OF STERILIZING AND STORING CATGUT.

So many prominent surgeons have adopted my suggestions for the preparation of catgut¹that I wish to describe methods which make the procedure vastly simpler in its application, and which at the same time remove any element of uncertainty regarding the results likely to be attained. Catgut prepared according to this formula has been used by the Mayo brothers in almost 5,000 operations and has been adopted by such well-known surgeons as Drs. Burrell, Collins, Cushing, Deaver, Finney, Frazier, Meyer and Murphy, as well as the men on the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital and on that of the Pennsylvania Hospital and many others. This is a sufficient testimonial to the worth of the procedure, and I am more than certain that the present[ill]modification of it here described can not fail to attract new users. As at present recommended very little time or trouble need be expended in