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The Mayo Clinic, like its founders, cannot boast of a great deal of original work, but serves as a testing field and improving plant for new theories. It is remarkable for its quick application of new discoveries to bedside practice. Some of its outstanding contributions to medicine: isolation of thyroid hormone (Dr. Edward Calvin Kendall); perfection of oxygen masks for aviators (Drs. Walter Meredith Boothby, William Randolph Lovelace II & Arthur Bulbulian); cutting fibers of the sympathetic nervous system to treat circulatory disturbances of hands and feet (Dr. Alfred Washington Adson); use of iodine in certain thyroid diseases (Dr. Henry Plummer).