Henry Stanley Plummer



Henry Stanley Plummer (born March 3, 1874 in Hamilton, Minnesota, died 1937 in Rochester, Minnesota) was a prominent internist and endocrinologist who was instrumental in the founding and flourishing of the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Plummer is also immortalized as the designer of the Plummer Building, which stands to this day in Rochester as a part of the Clinic he helped establish.

Plummer-Vinson syndrome is named after him and Porter Paisley Vinson. Plummer's nails refers to the separation of the nail from the nailbed which occurs in thyrotoxicosis and psoriatic arthritis.

He had a wife, Daisy, and two adopted children, Robert and Gertrude. Plummer's younger brother, Dr. William A. Plummer, was also a prominent Mayo physician.

Plummer earned his medical degree from Chicago's Northwestern University in 1898, and then returned to Racine, Minnesota to assist his father Dr. Albert Plummer in private practice.

He joined the Mayo Clinic in 1901, and Dr. William Mayo would later quip that hiring Dr. Plummer was the best days work he had ever done for the clinic.

In 1917 construction began on the Plummer House, the English tudor mansion where Dr. Plummer and his family lived. The house was designed by Plummer himself, and boasted many innovations that were rare at the time. This home is now maintained by the Rochester Park and Recreation Department and is available for private parties.

Not only a talented physician, Dr. Plummer was also a successful scientist and inventor. He developed a cable-carrier system for circulating correspondence within the clinic, directed the development of Mayo's clinical laboratories, and was the first to understand and operate an X-ray machine at the clinic. Dr. Will Mayo called Plummer a "a pioneer in the development of X-ray diagnosis and therapy". Perhaps one of his greatest contributions was the development of a simple, easily retrievable medical record system that became the model for record keeping worldwide.

In the late 1920's, Dr. Plummer designed the building that now bears his name. Located in downtown Rochester, Minnesota, the Plummer Building was well ahead of its time, boasting many amenities that are still in use today including a telephone system, cross-indexed patient records, a power plant, subways, and a pneumatic tube delivery system.