William Worrall Mayo

William Worrall Mayo (May 31, 1819 – March 6, 1911) was an English medical doctor and chemist. He is best known for establishing the private medical practice that later evolved into the Mayo Clinic. He was a descendant of a famous English chemist, John Mayow. His sons, William James Mayo and Charles Horace Mayo, established a joint medical practice in Rochester in the U.S. state of Minnesota in the 1880s. Early life William Worrall Mayo was born May 31, 1819, in Salford, Lancashire, England, which was then situated in the ecclesiastical parish of Eccles, where he was baptized on October 24, 1819. He studied science in Manchester under John Dalton, the chemist and physicist responsible for formulating the modern atomic theory of matter and devising a table of relative atomic weights. In 1846, Mayo left for the United States. His first work in his new country was as a pharmacist at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, though he soon moved westward. Mayo spent a brief period of time in Buffalo, New York, before settling in Lafayette, Indiana, where he worked as a tailor (one of the vocations he had while in England). He returned to medicine in 1849, assisting in a cholera outbreak and then attending courses at Indiana Medical College in La Porte, Indiana. Although the training there would probably be considered mediocre by modern standards, the school did have a microscope, an uncommon tool at the time. Knowledge of how to use this instrument proved to be useful in Mayo's future practice. It is a matter of debate whether Mayo actually graduated from the Indiana Medical College. William Mayo reportedly stated orally that he graduated from the Indiana Medical College. His graduation date from the Indiana Medical College has been reported as February 14, 1850. However, no documentation of his graduation exists and he is not listed in the Indiana Medical School list of graduates for that year. He then attended and graduated from the University of Missouri on February 28, 1854, with a degree in medicine. Migrating west