Louis B. Wilson

Who is Louis B. Wilson?

Louis B. Wilson, M.D. was the chief of pathology at Mayo Clinic from 1905 to 1937. Wilson is most famous for initiating the routine use of the frozen section procedure for rapid intraoperative diagnosis.

Wilson received his medical degree from the University of Minnesota in 1896. After this, Wilson was the assistant director of the bacteriology laboratory at the Minnesota State Board of Health and an assistant professor of pathology and bacteriology at the University of Minnesota and lived in Minneapolis. Dr. Henry Plummer urged the Mayo brothers to hire a well-trained pathologist to develop the laboratories at Mayo Clinic and Dr. Wilson reluctantly agreed to move to Rochester, Minnesota for this position. On January 1, 1905, Wilson began working at Mayo Clinic as the chief of pathology and he initiated a new scientific way of doing things at St. Marys Hospital. He systematized the processing of surgical and autopsy specimens and increased the number of autopsies performed at the hospital. Wilson began using a frozen section technique he created in 1905 and published a paper on his method in JAMA at the end of that year.