Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit academic medical center based in Rochester, Minnesota. It employs more than 4,500 physicians and scientists and 57,100 allied health staff. The clinic provides highly specialized care in more than 150 fields of medicine. It is also a leading research center, conducting basic, translational and clinical investigations. Mayo Clinic has been ranked as the #1 hospital in the United States by U.S. News & World Report for 20 consecutive years (1997-2016).
Mayo Clinic’s history dates back to the 1850s when two young frontier doctors, William Worrall Mayo and his brother Charles Horace Mayo, came to the small town of Rochester, Minnesota from their native Leicestershire, England. The brothers opened a medical practice that quickly grew into a thriving business. In 1883, Mother Alfred Moes founded Saint Marys Hospital in Rochester with 30 beds for patient care. The Mayo brothers began working at Saint Marys Hospital as consultants in 1886 and became full-time staff members in 1887 when they were appointed as co-chairs of surgery. This marked the beginning of a long and fruitful partnership between Mayo Clinic and Saint Marys Hospital (now part of Mayo Foundation Hospitals).
In 1889, after observing an especially severe outbreak of typhoid fever in Rochester, the Mayos believed that contaminated water was to blame and took their case to the city fathers. They convinced the city to build a new waterworks system that included filtering drinking water before it reached homes and businesses—a revolutionary idea at the time! This was an important early step in preventing disease outbreaks through sanitation measures.
Over the next several decades, under the leadership of Drs. William J., Charles H., and John Nolen Mayo—the sons of William Worrall Mayo—Mayo Clinic continued to grow in size and reputation. By 1915 it consisted of three buildings: Saint Marys Hospital; a 10-story clinic building;