Abstract: When Charles Miller Fisher was born in 1913, there was little scientific knowledge about brain diseases and their treatment. Views of stroke, one of the most common and most feared among brain conditions, almost completely flip-flopped during the 20th century. At the midpoint of the century, when Fisher began his career, there was little public or medical interest in stroke. By the end of the century, stroke care and research were among the most intensely active areas within all of medicine. This book is the story of that change and of one physician, Dr. C. Miller Fisher, a main architect and driver of that change. Fisher’s university and medical training occurred in Canada. After a medical internship, he enlisted in the Canadian Navy, early during World War II. After his ship was sunk, he spent 3½ years in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. He became interested in stroke during postdoctoral studies in Boston. During a half-century career in Montreal and at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, he devoted his career to stroke. Much of the change in the care of patients with stroke and cerebrovascular disease can be directly attributable to his research, his writings, and his teachings and to the physicians he mentored lovingly during his long and fruitful career.