became “undoubtedly a prevailing practice in many Catholic hospitals”. In 1883, Minnesota was devastated by a tornado. Mother Alfred Moes and the Sisters of Saint Francis proposed building a hospital to aid the sick and injured in Southern Minnesota. However, they stipulated that William Worrall Mayo (1819-1911) and his sons work at the hospital. The Mayos agreed, and in 1889, St Mary's Hospital opened with 27 beds. Although Catholic nuns seemed to be the most influential force in teaching nurses to administer anesthesia in the late 1800s, it was William W. Mayo who should be credited for promoting the popularity of nurse anesthesia practice. Mayo and his sons William J. Mayo and Charles H. Mayo were well known for their surgical skills. Surgeons traveled from across the country to their clinic in Minnesota to observe operations and learn their surgical techniques. However, the visiting surgeons also took note of the nurses administering anesthesia at the head of the operating table. One of the most well-known nurse anesthesia pioneers was Alice Magaw, who came to St Mary's Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1893. She was trained by the Graham sisters, Edith and Dinah, and began working as a nurse anesthetist for Charles H. Mayo, who bestowed on her the title of “Mother of Anesthesia” due to her natural aptitude and mastery of safe administration of open-drop ether. In addition to being skilled at anesthesia administration, Magaw documented and evaluated all her anesthesia procedures, culminating with a landmark article in nurse-anesthesia history. An even larger work (A Review of Over Fourteen Thousand Surgical Anesthesias) was published in 1906, reporting huge number of open-drop ether anesthetics, incredibly without a single fatality. Magaw's work highlighted the benefits of the trained anesthetist, allowing great advances in the practice of medicine. As the reputation and success of the Mayo Clinic spread, so did the renown of the Mayo Clinic nurse anesthetists. The sustainability and historical longevity of the practice of nurse anesthesia can be attributed to excellent working relationships between nurse anesthetists and surgeons in these early years of the practice. Impressed by the provision of superior anesthesia by nurses at St Mary's, and following the example of the Mayo Clinic, prominent Cleveland surgeon George Washington Crile recruited Agatha Cobourg Hodgins as his personal anesthetist in 1908. 20th Century and initial challenges Several notable nurse anesthetist from the early 20th century are revered by their modern