Medicine: Dr. Will

Last April, at the age of 77, Dr. William James Mayo, elder of the Rochester (Minn.) Clinic’s famed Mayo brothers, went under the knife for an ailment he had often treated: perforating gastric ulcer. For a while “Dr. Will” rallied, but all the magnificent resources of the Mayo Clinic failed to save his old, wornout body. Last week Dr. Will died. He had survived his brother, Dr. Charlie, his lifelong friend and partner, by only two months. Still practicing in Rochester is the last of the Mayos, Dr. Charlie’s son, 41-year-old Dr. Charles William Mayo.