The late Drs. William and Charles Mayo, of Rochester, Minn., who hated publicity so much that they once wanted to sue for "libel" a newspaper which praised them, this week are the subject of an authorized biography. Five years ago, three years before they died, the Mayo brothers gave the University of Minnesota permission to publish a biography of themselves and their pioneer father, Dr. William Worrall Mayo, who died in 1911, at 91. The Doctors Mayo, published this week by the University of Minnesota Press ($3.75), is authored by a onetime Minnesota librarian, Helen Berniece Clapesattle. Written with Victorian reverence, the book is a jumbled mass of facts and recollections about the growth of a great medical institution, a dull book full of interesting facts.
Ferryman on the Minnesota. William Worrall Mayo came to the U.S. from Britain in 1845. He became a pharmacist in Manhattan's old Bellevue Hospital, later studied medicine at Indiana Medical College, moved, after several stops, to the little town of Rochester, Minn., 75 miles from Minneapolis. To eke out his meager earnings as a physician, the lively young man worked at various times as druggist, tailor, horse doctor, ferryman on the Minnesota River.
During the Civil War, 39 leaders of the hostile Minnesota Sioux were hanged. Dr. Mayo carted off the body of an ugly brave named Cut Nose, and after dissecting him, he strung together his skeleton, used it to teach his young sons anatomy. About this time, he mortgaged his house to buy a microscope.
As his practice grew with the population of the wheat belt, Dr. Mayo went back to Manhattan, studied surgery and gynecology. After he returned he began removing ovarian tumors, soon became so successful in the specialty that doctors came from all over the State to watch his work. He did not believe in antisepsis, always wore tails and top hat, and carried his instruments loose in his pockets.
In 1861 his son William James was born; four years later came Charles Horace. The boys went everywhere with their father. When he performed operations, they were his assistants: Will acted as first assistant while Charlie stood by with needles and thread stuck in his lapels; before he was twelve, Charlie became his father's anesthetist. "We were reared in medicine," Dr. Will once said, "as a farmer boy is reared in farming."
Will and Charlie. In 1880, at the age of 19, Will Mayo went to the University of Michigan Medical School. Three years later, a serious, dignified young M.D., he returned to practice with his father. Although he assured people he was going to be "the greatest surgeon in the world," the farmers mistrusted him because of his youth and even his father kept tight rein on him. But when he was 27, Dr. Will asserted himself.
One day he examined a woman with an enormous ovarian tumor. His father made plans for an operation the following Sunday, invited doctors from near & far to watch the performance. Then he went off to St. Paul for a consultation. On Sunday, a crowd of doctors gathered around the woman's bedside, but Dr. Mayo did not show up. Taking his courage in his hands, Dr. Will performed the operation himself. When his father came in, he was "speechless."