It was a dark, stormy night in the town of Rochester, Minnesota. Old Doctor Mayo had been called to perform an autopsy on the body of the caretaker who had lived all alone in an abandoned hotel.

Young Will Mayo raced along beside his father through the storm. They had only the light of a flickering kerosene lantern as they began the necessary but grisly task of opening the body to take samples of tissue and some of the vital organs. Then the doctor had to leave to care for an emergency elsewhere in town.

Will was left alone to finish the autopsy. His shadow, by lanternlight, loomed gigantic on the wall. For once he was frightened. Ordinarily human bodies, living or dead, did not disturb either Will or his younger brother, Charlie. They had been taught to assist at operations, prepare microscopic slides—in fact do anything needful around their father's office.

On this night, however, with the wind howling around the old building and sighing and moaning through the long, empty corridors, Will shivered with fear. But he finished the job—as he finished every job he ever undertook in his life -- wrapped his samples of tissue and started homeward. The creaking of the weathered hotel signboard swinging in the wind was one straw too many. Will raced for home far faster than he had come.

Storms in the atmosphere, and in their public and professional life, were frequent in the career of the Mayo brothers. A devastating tornado played a major role in their development. On August 21, 1883, a huge, whirling cloud moved swiftly on the town, sucking buildings into the funnel and spewing wreckage in all directions. Will and Charlie worked throughout that terrifying night aiding the many injured. Next morning they were grateful for the assistance of the Sister of St. Francis, a Catholic order of teaching nuns which had its mother house in Rochester. And it was this same catastrophe which inspired the Mother Superior with the idea of building the much-needed hospital, St. Mary's. The nuns actually deprived themselves of sufficient food and clothing to save for this great humanitarian project.

The Mayos designed the operating room and it was her that they performed some of the operations which eventually spread their fame around the world and made the little town of Rochester a mecca for patients as well as fellow surgeons. Pasteur and Lister had made their immortal contributions to medical science. Now the young Mayo brothers—inventors of the medical clinic—added their names to the gleaming roster.

Here is an inspiring book about two fascinating men. It is the distillation of years of research.

From the dust jacket