It may be something related to a heart condition ( long shot) replace mendance with mendes:
Jacob Mendes or Mendez was an American physician.
He is particularly known for discovering Da Costa's syndrome (also known as soldier's heart), an anxiety disorder combining effort fatigue, dyspnoea, a sighing respiration, palpitation and sweating that he first observed in soldiers in the American Civil War and documented in an 1871 study.
He worked at Satterlee Hospital in Philadelphia where he studied over 400 patients with non-specific cardiac complaints. As a result of these studies, he identified a new condition he termed "irritable heart" (sometimes called Da Costa Syndrome) in 1862. By 1871 he published his landmark study of the condition.
If I remember my classics correctly 'poly' means multiple (?)
just a thought from a non-medical person.