FOUNDERS OF THE MAYO CLINIC

A New Way of Practicing Medicine.

Brothers and outstanding surgeons, William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo along with their father, William Worrall Mayo (1819-1911), founded the world-famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, one of the nation's first efforts at practicing medicine through group practice. The clinic began as part of Saint Mary's Hospital, which was opened in 1889 by the Sisters of Saint Francis with the help of the William Worrall Mayo, who had immigrated to the United States from England in 1845 and settled in Rochester as a country doctor. The three Mayos named their part of Saint Mary's the Mayo Clinic in 1903. Although the Mayo Clinic began as a surgical clinic, it became a full medical center in 1915 when the clinic's facilities were expanded, and the brothers began to attract other renowned physicians from all over the world. At that time they also founded the Mayo...