William Worrall Mayo

I had a meeting this afternoon at Salford Royal, in the Mayo building. 

Leaving I looked at the sculpture in the reception area, a 3D representation of a man's face constructed out of approx 27,000 tiny test tubes. And on one part of it a glass panel fixed to the display with tiny test tubes, with a quote - "No man is big enough to be independent of others" (WW Mayo). 

The accompanying information panel has a photo of WW Mayo, and information about the artist, Claire Girvin. But nothing about Mayo - maybe so well known to medics that no explanation is needed.

So I've looked him up. A fascinating life. The basics are - born 1819 in Salford, studied science in Manchester under John Dalton, left for America in 1846, did all sorts of things (resourceful is definitely the word), settled in Rochester Minnesota in 1864, founded the Mayo Clinic there with his two sons in the early 1890's, died in 1911 (even his death was not ordinary).

The Mayo Clinic is now a non profit medical practice and medical research group employing 64,000 people, which spends 500 million US dollars on medical research a year, and is one of the top hospitals in the world. I had never heard of it, but J has - it is beloved of celeb's apparently.

Salford Royal is one of the best hospitals in the UK, and its Chief Executive Sir David Dalton is highly regarded nationally. Something circular about all this.

It's Tiny Tuesday. these are tiny test tubes. And besides the head of WW Mayo, I appear as a ghostly presence.