User:Mayfieldclinic/sandbox

Frank Mayfield was born in Garnett, South Carolina on June 23, 1908. Yet, most of his childhood years were enjoyed on a farm near Norlina, North Carolina, the family’s homeplace for seven generations. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina and planned for a career in public health until neurosurgery caught his interest. At the Medical College of Virginia, he was a student of Claude Coleman, a pioneer in neurosurgery. Mayfield is best known for his clinical interests in peripheral nerve and spine injuries, development of neurosurgical instruments, and medical politics.

On July 1, 1937 Mayfield moved to Cincinnati from Louisville to establish neurosurgery services at Good Samaritan Hospital. Within a year Mayfield had so many patients that he was often working 90 hours a week, with 7 to 8 cases a day and frequent late-night trips to rural hospitals. He had a driver and slept en route. He had to carry a large bag of neurosurgical instruments everywhere he operated. This sparked his ingenuity to invent instruments for the new field of neurosurgery.

Soon after arriving in Cincinnati, Mayfield was called to war. He served as Chief of Neurosurgery at Percy Jones General Hospital. More than 25,000 cases of major nerve injuries were treated during this time. Senator Bob Dole was a patient.

After the war, Mayfield focused on resident education and assumed leadership roles in numerous medical associations. His clinical practice and partnership rapidly expanded. In the 1960’s Ohio law allowed limited partnerships but not professional corporations. Taxation and malpractice insurance led the group to challenge the IRS and file for incorporation. In 1971 Mayfield, Lotspeich, Hunter and Budde, Ltd. became the first physician group in Ohio to incorporate.

In the national arena of organized medicine, Mayfield and his colleagues wisely perceived that the neurosurgical profession in America did not possess a unified voice. As president of the Harvey Cushing Society, he addressed this issue by gathering his political forces and diplomatically making plans. During his Presidential Address in 1965, he proclaimed that henceforth the Harvey Cushing Society would be the official voice of neurosurgery in the United States. He went on to suggest that a sub name be added, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. The speech, which became known as the "Mayfield Proclamation," transformed the Cushing Society into the AANS.

Perhaps Frank Mayfield’s greatest local political impact was his three-decade crusade to defuse the town versus gown conflicts between the University and its private hospital competitors. In 1951 Mayor Cash asked Mayfield to join the UC Board of Directors with one charge – to make the community hospitals surrounding the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati General Hospital a part of the University Center. In 1967 Mayfield drafted a Master Plan for Walter Langsam, President of the University. At the time, UC was not ready for such a plan. Not until 1982 did changes in leadership allow elements of Mayfield’s Master Plan to come to fruition.

In 1973, upon his 65th birthday and by pre-arrangement, Mayfield yielded control of the practice. The group renamed the practice Mayfield Neurological Institute, Inc. in his honor. Today it is known as the Mayfield Clinic & Spine Institute.

Despite Frank's humble disavowal of personal credit for the many honors bestowed upon him, his ethics, vision, prodigious energy, and his total regard for the sanctity of friendship led his peers to call him "the neurosurgeon's neurosurgeon" and the "conscience of neurosurgery."