{"id":1923,"date":"2019-03-18T10:00:55","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T15:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2019-03-18T13:36:39","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T18:36:39","slug":"the-mayo-clinic-faith-hope-science-and-a-glimpse-into-medical-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/the-mayo-clinic-faith-hope-science-and-a-glimpse-into-medical-history\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science–And a Glimpse into Medical History"},"content":{"rendered":"

About five or six years ago, my oldest brother wound up getting sick with a bad case of mono and had to go to St. Mary\u2019s Hospital in Rochester for treatment. While he was there, it turned out that the 14th<\/sup> Dalai Lama was also visiting Rochester for his annual checkup at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic there. One day as doctors were beginning to give my brother shots, they ushered my mother out of the room. On her way out, she jokingly said \u201cI\u2019m going to go meet the Dalai Lama!\u201d Lo and behold, she actually got a picture with him and came back with a smile on her face. So, there you have it: the short story of how my mother met the Dalai Lama, the two brought together by their trust and connection to world-renowned The Mayo Clinic.<\/p>\n

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Ms. Stoulil and the Dalai Lama<\/p><\/div>\n

The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope and Science <\/em>tells\u00a0the story of how the Mayo Clinic health care company was founded, how it came to be one of the largest contributors to health research, and how its innovative group-led medical practices have put the focus on its patients. The film mainly centers itself on the founders of the clinic, William Worrall Mayo and his two sons William and Charles Mayo. This two-hour documentary produced by Ken Burns, Erik Ewers, and Christopher Loren Ewers was first aired on PBS in the fall of 2018 and has since then been released on numerous online streaming services. From its unique content and cinematic techniques to the subjects being featured, The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope and Science <\/em>is an aesthetically pleasing production that employs the modes, ethics, and styles, and creativity that goes into documentary filmmaking.<\/p>\n

In any documentary, ethics are important. The directors have to make important decisions on what they should and shouldn\u2019t show, talk about, or portray in a certain fashion. They need to obtain permissions from certain premises, as well as the people they plan to interview. In\u00a0The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope and Science,\u00a0<\/em>ethics such as deciding what surgical procedures and surgical photos are appropriate to show, gaining permission to film inside the clinic headquarters, along with setting up interviews with doctors and patients were all considered in the making of the film. Even the ethics of actually shooting the surgeries had to be evaluated, as director Erik Ewers noted that when they were filming the surgeries they had to scrub in and weren\u2019t allowed to touch anything colored blue in the operating room.<\/p>\n

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The founding Mayo family.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope and Science <\/em>tells\u00a0the 150 years of history behind the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, a health care company in Rochester, Minnesota ranked the number one hospital in the United States with access to cutting-edge technology for medical research. The Mayo Clinic\u00a0<\/em>contains modern footage from the clinic headquarters in Rochester, still shots of the hospitals, surgeons, and nuns from the clinic\u2019s archives, voice-over narration, and interviews with various patients who\u2019ve received care at the clinic. The documentary progresses through its story by switching between the history of the clinic with the Mayo family and stories from the patients who were interviewed at the time of production.<\/p>\n

While many of the subjects in The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope and Science <\/em>were patients undergoing treatments at the time of the filming, a few of the patients were a little more familiar to viewers. Well-known figures such as the Dalai Lama and the late U.S. Senator John McCain were also subjects of the documentary, with the Dalai Lama going to the clinic for yearly checkups and Senator McCain a brain cancer patient. Another notable subject of the film was a patient by the name of Roger Frisch, a world class violinist with an arm tremor who underwent deep brain stimulation to make the tremors go away.<\/p>\n