Augustus Stinchfield
Dr. Augustus W. Stinchfield (1842 - 1917) was one of the founders, along with Drs. Charles Horace Mayo, William James Mayo, Christopher Graham, E. Starr Judd, Henry Stanley Plummer, Melvin Millet and Donald Balfour, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
Born December 21, 1842 at Phillips, Maine, he recieved his early education at Strong, Maine. As a young man he moved from Maine to Wisconsin, and, in 1864 he enlisted as a private in Company F of the Thirty-ninth Wisconsin Volunteer Army. After the Civil War, he attended Bowdoin College and the University of Michigan. He recieved his M.D. degree from Bowdoin College in 1868. After practicing medicine in Verona, Missouri, as well as Dundas and Eyota, Minnesota, Stichfield was asked by William Worrall Mayo to join the Mayos practice in 1892. William Worrall Mayo was retiring and wanted a mid-career physician to balance the growing private practice.
While the Mayo brothers excelled in surgery, Stinchfield was well qualified to handle the non-surgical duties of the practice. When Will Mayo approached the remaining partners in 1915 about changing the private practice to a not-for-profit practice, Stichfield was the first to sign the agreement. When the remaining partners signed the transfer papers, this gift insured the long term survival, development and growth of the Mayo Clinic.
Bibliography
Psychological influences in health and disease, Tr. Minnesota State Medical Society, 1875, pp 30 - 40
Sciatic neuritis, Northwest. Lancet, 14:184, 1894
Gastritis, Northwest. Lancet, 15:321-324, 1895
The treatment of pleurisy, Northwest. Lancet, 16:395, 1896
Nervous syndroms of Bright's disease, Northwest. Lancet, 16:449, 1896
Bronchitis anditscomplications, Northwest. Lancet, 17:452 - 455, 1897
Cardiac dilation, St. Paul Med. Jour. 2:610-615, 1900
References
Clapesattle, Helen. The Doctors Mayo, University of Minnesota Press (1975). ISBN 0-8166-0465-7
Mayo Clinic, Physicians of the Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Foundation, University of Minnesota Press, 1936