The Mayos

In Ireland. A company of neat, composed gentlemen disembarked, last week, from a train in Dublin. Hooligans tossing bottle-tops at a seam in the railway platform left off their innocent pastime and conversed in alcoholic whispers. These gentlemen, they had been told, were a crew of mallyvoguelers who could cut the bowels of a man into laces and tie them up again as easy as saying whiskey. They stared as the neat gentlemen--350 U. S. members of the Interstate Post-Graduate Medical Assembly (TIME, June 15) fresh from London--paraded past to their conveyances.

In Dublin, next day, the doctors visited the Mater Misericordia Hospital; saw Surgeons II. F. Moore, J. M. Hayden of Ireland demonstrate the concluding stage of their cure for osteomalacia;* went on to Belfast, where Queen's University conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws on Dr. Franklin H. Martin of Chicago, Dr. Hugh Cabot of Ann Arbor, and one surgeon more famed than even these. Then, into a grimly gracious castle, tenanted by Sir James Craig, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, and his Lady, the surgeons from Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri and where-not marched.

They felt grateful for their entertainment to the knightly Prime Minister. They felt even more grateful to Dr. William B. Peck of Freeport. Ill, for to him they owed the fact that they were there at all. Some years ago, Dr. Peck organized the Tri-State Medical Association, with members from Illinois, Iowa, Missouri. Once a year, it held a congress in some large U. S. city where the delegates attended medical clinics, were addressed by famed speakers, whose expenses had been paid by Dr. Peck. The Association grew, took in six more states, was finally organized as the Interstate Post-Graduate Medical Association. The present tour is its first public venture. A perspicacious manager is this Dr. Peck. He knows the might of a name, and, some months ago, secured as President of his organization the celebrated gentleman upon whom Queen's University conferred its third degree-- Dr. Charles Horace Mayo, the son of Dr. William W., the brother of Dr. William J., the co-founder of the famed Mayo Foundation at Rochester, Minn., where even the alley-cats, it is said, cry: "Mayou."

The Mayos. Dr. William W. Mayo, the father, settled in Le Sueur, Minn., when land sold for 50c an acre and a man's shotgun was his Bible. The land was arid, crops meagre. In heed of funds, Mayor hung out a shingle on which was burnt his name prefixed by the word "Doctor." His first "case" called for a post-mortem examination of a horse which had suffered a bizarre demise. Shortly after, Mayo, having received an appointment as Army Surgeon, went to Rochester where the Sisters of St. Francis built him a hospital--30 beds. His two sons, when they came of age, gave their attention to this hospital. The world has since beaten its path to their door.

Dr. Charles Horace Mayo was born in Rochester in 1865--three years after his father had come there from Le Sueur. He graduated from the Chicago Medical College,* began at once to practice with his father and his elder brother, William J. (born in 1861). The citizens of Rochester generally agreed that young Charles was the least "impressive" of the three Mayos. Perhaps his appearance prejudiced, for he was not genial. No ruddy jester was he, with a nervous eyelid and a midwifian ribaldry to cheer the anxious parent in her distress. Far from it. William J. was a spot that way, but Charles was a doleful fellow, "with a face pulled out of tallow." That was a long time ago. Last year, at the Democratic Convention in Manhattan, Charles Horace Mayo was loudly mentioned (though his name was never put in nomination) as a candidate both for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency of the U. S.--an honor as extraordinary as it would have been inappropriate. Still reticent, he has met the recognition that sometimes overtakes inarticulate men who have lost themselves in their work and look up, astonished, after many years, to find that they are celebrated. It was he who compelled the staff of the Hospital to attend to "the small things in every single department that could possibly contribute the best work--from the initial diagnosis to the use of the knife." Thrifty, but not businesslike, he has left to his brother the management of their donations and of that discreet but widespread publicity which taught the world the excellence of the mousetraps of Rochester. Charles is inflexible in body as in brain. When asked to face the camera, he leaves his feet planted in the direction they are taking, rotates his chunky body solemnly from the hips. His brother, who looks like a dashing admiral, strikes any pose his mood commands. It is he who performs the "attractive" operations; to Charles falls the unpretentious work, the routine that has made the Mayo Foundation famed throughout the world. Their hospital, bowered with lawns and orchards, has ten operating rooms. During the last four years, 28,970 abdominal operations have been performed there. On every train, the sick pour in--sometimes 200 a day. All are treated. The rich pay. The moderately circumstanced pay according to their means. As for the poor, they are cared for gratis.

* A rare disease in which the bones of adults become so soft that multiple fractures occur. ** Now Northwestern University Medical School.