Julia Dempsey

Julia Dempsey, known in religious life as Sister Mary Joseph, was an American religious sister, nurse and hospital administrator who lived from 1856 to 1939. Born in Salamanca, New York, she grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, took her vows with the Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester in 1878 and was trained as a teacher by her order. After about a dozen years of teaching she returned to Rochester in 1890 to help staff the newly built Saint Marys Hospital. She learned nursing from the only experienced nurse in the city, became head nurse and served as surgical assistant to Dr. William J. Mayo, one of the brothers who founded the Mayo Clinic. Mayo regarded her surgical judgment as equal to that of any medical man. She was superintendent of the hospital from 1892 until 1939 and in 1906 founded its training school for nurses to ease a shortage of nurses. Her name is also attached to the Sister Mary Joseph nodule, a palpable bulge at the umbilicus caused by metastasis of a pelvic or abdominal cancer, which she brought to Mayo's attention.