Hugh R. Butt, M.D., the last assistant to work directly with William Mayo, M.D., a founder of Mayo Clinic, died Aug. 16, 2008, in Rochester, Minn. He was 98 years old.
Dr. Butt was lauded internationally for his accomplishments in medicine, including the discovery that vitamin K stopped bleeding in patients with jaundice, previously a fatal condition. While still a medical resident, he published his vitamin K study in 1938. The findings changed the practice of hepatology, the branch of medicine that incorporates the study and management of disorders of the liver, gallbladder, biliary tree and pancreas.
Update: The New York Times ran a story on Dr. Butt’s passing on Sunday, Aug. 24.
One who benefited from Dr. Butt’s vitamin K research was Dr. William Mayo. In an interview in 1997, Dr. Butt recalled how Dr. Mayo, who was jaundiced after surgery to treat cancer, called him to his hospital room. Dr. Mayo told him, “I’ve operated on these women who were 40 or 45 with three or four children and do a good operation. They got along fine for one or two days, and they’d bleed to death. I always thought it would be an awful way to die.
“Now since you’ve discovered that vitamin K will stop the blood, I know I’m not going to bleed to death, and I wanted to thank you.”
Three years later, Dr. Butt became interested in the anticoagulation properties of dicumarol. He conducted the first human trials using this substance, found in spoiled sweet clover, and made another seminal discovery. With the dicumarol, he said, “You could make a person’s blood not clot, and you could control it with large doses of vitamin K.”
Mavis Kelsey, M.D., a resident who worked with Dr. Butt and later founded the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic in Houston, Texas, said the coagulation research was the most important contribution in Dr. Butt’s stellar career, a development that later made possible open heart surgery and organ transplants. “In today’s world, he would have been given the Nobel Prize,” he said.
Dr. Butt discusses the early years of his career in the video below:
Dr. Butt, a Virginia native, entered Mayo Graduate School in 1934 after graduating from the University of Virginia Medical School and was appointed to the staff in 1938. He was the first chairman of the Mayo Clinic’s Division of Gastroenterology and Internal Medicine and a professor of medicine in the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. His association with Mayo Clinic lasted more than 50 years and included terms on the Mayo Clinic Board of Governors and the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees. As recently as 2006 he gave a popular introductory lecture to first-year medical students on the legacy of Doctors Will and Charlie Mayo. That lecture was videotaped and is still in wide use today.
“Hugh Butt contributed significantly to all of the elements of the Mayo mission as an educator, researcher and a gifted practitioner of medicine,” said Robert Waller, M.D., Mayo Clinic president and CEO from 1988 to 1999. “Hugh bridged the gap between the founders and the current leaders of the Mayo Clinic. He never stopped thinking of ways of being helpful to Mayo, whether it was mentoring young students, nurturing leaders or attracting benefactors.”
In the early 1960s, he served as president of the two most prestigious medical societies in his field, the American Gastroenterological Association and the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
In 1971, he was named a fellow in the Royal College of Physicians, London, at that time one of only 20 Americans to be elected to this honorary position. At the same time, he served as president of the American College of Physicians and, in 1973, he received a mastership from the association, an elite achievement award, which at that time had been awarded to fewer than 100 physicians.
Dr. Butt was one of the driving forces in creating the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, heading a $500 million endowment. Personally selected by Daniel K. Ludwig to guide the scientific establishment, staffing and programs of the developing institute, he defined the character and set the course for the global activities of the institute as chairman of the Scientific Committee from 1971 to 1987.
“Hugh’s uncompromising commitment to excellence, his inherent dissatisfaction with the status quo and his insistence on a closer integration between laboratory and clinical research, gave rise to principles that still guide the institute today,” said Lloyd J. Old, M.D., chairman, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. “Hugh’s uncanny eye for spotting talent and leadership potential in young scientists, as evidenced by the outstanding achievements of the founding directors selected to lead the institute’s branches, are testimony to Hugh’s continuing impact on the Institute’s activities. The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research has now emerged as the largest international academic institute focused on cancer in the world, and Hugh Butt’s critical role in launching the institute stands as his enduring legacy to mankind’s battle against this disease.”
Known for his forthrightness and humor, Dr. Butt developed lifelong friendships with many patients, some of whom were major donors to Mayo Clinic. In 1972, his patient Conrad Hilton pledged $10 million to construct a building for laboratory medicine in Rochester. At that time, it was the largest gift ever to a medical facility. The Hilton Building opened in 1974. In still another example, his patients J.E. Davis and his wife, Flo, of Jacksonville, Fla., donated the 140-acre site for Mayo Clinic Florida, which opened in 1986. Davis was an owner of the Winn Dixie grocery store chain.
As a longtime physician to Steven Fiterman and his parents, Shirley and Miles Fiterman, who live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., area, Dr. Butt was more than just a physician.
“He had the ability to affect an entire family, to accept them as one of theirs,” said Steven Fiterman. “He was loved by our entire family. He was generous and unique. We were patients and adopted family.”
In fact, Dr. Butt was among the few people who could counsel Miles Fiterman and he would accept it. Dr. Butt suggested that Miles Fiterman sell his business for health reasons, and he did. Dr. Butt guided Miles Fiterman’s treatment for heart disease.
In 1990, the Fitermans established the Hugh R. Butt Award for Distinguished Achievment in Hepatology and Nutrition through the American Gastroenterological Association. Awarded to a distinguished clinician each year, the award “will go on forever,” said Steven Fiterman. His parents also funded the Shirley and Miles Fiterman Center for Digestive Diseases at Mayo Clinic.
Friends say his many accomplishments and recognitions didn’t affect his demeanor. “Any man who has red hair and is named Butt was destined to be the butt of jokes,” said the late C.R. Fleming, M.D., a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist at a Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumnus Dinner in 1995, feting Dr. Butt as a Distinguished Alumnus of Mayo Clinic. “For him to choose gastroenterology and affectionately to be called ‘Red’ required thick skin and a real sense of humor.”
Post-retirement, Dr. Butt devoted more time to his longtime interest in art. He was a self-taught metal sculptor and used farm implements, old tools, wire and other metals to create whimsical figures. Dr. Butt’s sculptures were featured in three solo exhibitions at the Rochester Art Center, Rochester, Minn. most recently in 2006, and in two invitational exhibits there. His work has been exhibited in galleries in New York, Texas, Wisconsin and at the Circa Gallery in Minneapolis.
Dr. Butt and his late wife, Mary Dempwolf, had four children: Lucy Butsch, Buffalo, N.Y.; Selby Beeler, Rochester, Minn.; the late Charles Butt; and Frances Cohn, Telluride, Colo. He also had seven grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.
Service information: Visitation is Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Ranfranz and Vine Funeral Home, 5421 Royal Place, N.W., Rochester, Minn. A public memorial gathering is planned for Sept. 20, 2008. Memorials can be made to the Hugh Butt. M.D., Endowment for Nutritional Research in Gastroenterology.
Update: The Rochester Post-Bulletin has a story on Dr. Butt.
What is the time and place of the Sept 20 Memorial?