Julia Dempsey (14 May 1856 – 29 March 1939), better known as Sister Mary Joseph, was an American
religious sister
A religious sister (abbreviated ''Sr.'' or Sist.) in the Catholic Church is a woman who has taken public vows in a religious institute dedicated to apostolic works, as distinguished from a nun who lives a cloistered monastic life dedicated to pr ...
,
nurse
Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses may be differentiated from other health ...
and hospital administrator.
Life and work
Julia Dempsey was born in
Salamanca, New York
Salamanca (Seneca: ''Onë:dagö:h'') is a city in Cattaraugus County, New York, United States, inside the Allegany Indian Reservation, one of two governed by the Seneca Nation of New York. The population was 5,929 at the 2020 census. It was named ...
on 14 May 1856, one of six children in her family. They moved to
Rochester, Minnesota
Rochester is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Olmsted County. Located on rolling bluffs on the Zumbro River's south fork in Southeast Minnesota, the city is the home and birthplace of the renowned Mayo Clinic.
Ac ...
when Julia was a child. She took her vows as a member of the
Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota in 1878 and the order trained her as a teacher during her
novitiate
The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...
. Dempsey took the name of Sister Mary Joseph and taught for a dozen years before she returned to Rochester to help staff the newly built
Saint Marys Hospital in 1890. Sister Mary Joseph was trained by the only experienced nurse in the city and became the hospital's head nurse and
surgical assistant to Dr.
William J. Mayo
William James Mayo (June 29, 1861 – July 28, 1939) was a physician and surgeon in the United States and one of the seven founders of the Mayo Clinic. He and his brother, Charles Horace Mayo, both joined their father's private medical practice ...
, one of the Mayo brothers that founded the
Mayo Clinic. "Even without formal training, she was an excellent nurse, according to Mayo. He noted that her surgical judgment was equal to that of any medical man and that she ranked first among all of his assistants."
[Ogilvie & Harvey, p. 703] Sister Mary Joseph remained his assistant until 1915. She became superintendent of the hospital in 1892 and remained in that role until 1939. She founded
Saint Mary’s Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1906 to help alleviate a shortage of nurses. She died on 29 March 1939 at Saint Mary's Hospital.
[
The ]eponymous
An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''.
Usage of the word
The term ''epon ...
phenomenon known as the Sister Mary Joseph nodule
In medicine, the Sister Mary Joseph nodule (sometimes Sister Mary Joseph node or Sister Mary Joseph sign) refers to a palpable nodule bulging into the umbilicus as a result of metastasis of a malignant cancer in the pelvis or abdomen. Sister Mary ...
refers to a palpable nodule bulging into the umbilicus as a result of metastasis
Metastasis is a pathogenic agent's spread from an initial or primary site to a different or secondary site within the host's body; the term is typically used when referring to metastasis by a cancerous tumor. The newly pathological sites, then, ...
of a malignant cancer in the pelvis or abdomen
The abdomen (colloquially called the belly, tummy, midriff, tucky or stomach) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the tors ...
. She pointed Mayo's attention to the bulge, and he published an article about it in 1928, although the actual term was not coined until 1949 by Hamilton Bailey.
See also
*'' Women of Mayo Clinic''
Notes
References
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dempsey, Julia
1856 births
1939 deaths
University of Breslau alumni
American nurses
American women nurses
20th-century American Roman Catholic nuns
19th-century American Roman Catholic nuns
Mayo Clinic people