BORN OF A TORNADO

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 260, 1 August 1939, Page 9

BORN OF A TORNADO

Most Wonderful Surgical Clinic In World “One of the most startling discoveries iu the history of medicine might never have been know if a. tornado had not wrecked a town in Minnesota a little over half a century ago,” says Dale Carnegie, writing of the eminent Mayo brothers, whose father established the famous American surgical clinic. The death of the second of the brothers, Dr. William J. Mayo, was reported in a cable message from New York published yesterday. “The town the tornado struck was Rochester, Minnesota, now worldfamous as the home of the Mayo brothers. And the discovery is a drug to cure insanity, which is injected into the body of the feeble-minded or insane person. “Physicians from Paris, London, Berlin, Rome, Leningrad and Tokio journey to Rochester to sit at the feet of the Mayo brothers and learn. Sixty thousand patients a year, most of them facing their last chance against death, make pilgrimages to the Mayo clinic as to a holy shrine. Yet, to repeat, if a tornado had not twisted and roared through the Middle West 52 years ago, the world would probably have never heard of the Mayo brothers or Rochester.

“When Dr. Mayo, the father, settled there 70 years ago. Rochester had only 2000 people. His first two patients were a sick cow and a sick horse. When the Indian war broke out Dr. Mayo grabbed his musket and made the Redskins bite the dust. When the smoke of battle cleared away he picked, his way over .the battleground laying out the dead and treating the wounded. Offer of Hospital. “He had two sons, William and Charles. They worked in a local drug store, learned how to fill prescriptions and pound up pills, went to medical college—and then the tragedy occurred, a tragedy destined to affect the history of medicine.

“A cyclone, a tornado, swept over the prairies of Minnesota like an angry god. It blasted and demolished everything in the path of its fury. . It struck Rochester aud knocked it into a cocked hat. Hundreds of people were injured and 23 were killed. For days the Mayo brothers and their father worked among the ruins, bandaging wounds, setting broken limbs, and performing operations. “Sister Alfred, Mother Superior of the Convent Sisters of. St. Francis, was so impressed with ’their work that she offered to build a hospital if the Mayos would take charge of it, They agreed, anti when the clinic was opened in 1889 old Dr. Mayo was a man of 70, and his two sons bad never even served as hospital internes. ‘We were the greenest of a green crew 3 - —that is the way they described themselves. Yet today the William Mayo, the oldei brother, is considered the world s greatest authority on cancer. City Exists for Clinic. ■•The entire city of Rochester now exists by and for the Mayo clinic. No street cars are allowed. The buses run silently, and even the conversation in the streets is hushed. Paupers and bank presidents, farmers and movie stars, all have to take their turns iu the waiting-room, and all are treated alike. The rich pay according to their means, but no oue has ever been turned away because he was unable to pay... . One man mortgaged his farm to pay them for saving his life, and when they discovered what he had done they returned his cheque and sent him a cheque of their own for several hundred dollars to compensate him for the loss he had sustained during his illness.

“They are glorious examples of two small-town boys who have never been interested in making money; aud yet it poured in to them like a golden flood. They did not care for fame; yet they ate the most famous surgeons in the I’nited States today. Their sole desire has been to aid suffering humanity.