FORTUNE FOR SURGERY

Evening Star, Issue 20510, 14 June 1930, Page 9

FORTUNE FOR SURGERY

FAMOUS MAYO CLINIC GIFT OF £2,600,000 A large fortune is to be dedicated to the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. This comprises the millions accumulated by the Mayo brothers, the world-famous surgeons, duringthirty-five years. Dr William James Mayo, the brother who is head of the Mayo clinic in Minnesota, has himself made the announcement. Tho amount available is understood to be nearly £2,600,000. Lord Dawson of Penn, Physician-in-Ordinary to the King, added to the fame of the Mayo brothers by calling them “the Heavenly Twins of Surgery.” Their clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is probably the most famous surgical clinic in the world.. It has,a staff of sixty surgeons, specialising in every organ of the body, and drawing incomes of which the highest is about £20.000 a year. About 130 other physicians and surgeons and 500 nurses assist the specialists. Around the Rochester clinic has grown up a colony of sumptuous hotels. This groat clinic was founded by the father of the “Heavenly Twins,”, Dr W. W. Mayo, of Beccles, Lancashire. Dr W. W. Mayo emigrated to the United States at a time when he and his wife had to fight in hand-to-hand combat with the Indians. He started to practise in Minnesota; and his two sons followed him, taking over his hospital and making it, by their brilliant surgery, the greatest of its kind in America.

The Rochester Hospital is run on, a religiously equitable basis. It places, its vast resources of talent and appointments at the disposal of rich and poor alike, levying a tariff of 10 per cent, of the sworn income of the patient. Tims the millionaire pays £5.000 for the operation wbi" l ’, the “down-and-out,” gets, for nothing. The Mayo clinic receives neither public subscriptions nor legacies. Its staff performs 7.000 operations per year. The. brothers have been honoured by both Leeds amd Manchester Universities.