Long before he went to medical school, invented the modern intensive care unit and trained thousands of people in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Max Harry Weil was just a boy who never left the house without a first aid kit.

His idol was the family doctor.

“I thought he was a magician,” Weil says. “If you were sick or if something was bruised or broken, he somehow made it better.”

Now 82, Weil has woven his own brand of magic.

Recognized throughout the world as the father of the critical care movement, Weil has made innovations in his field that are still used today. He trained legions of other doctors, nurses and health care professionals in the around-the-clock monitoring of a patient's vital signs, saving an exponential number of lives. He made CPR classes accessible for the community and brought defibrillators into stores, restaurants, country clubs.

“The things we do right now for our patients, we owe to Dr. Weil,” said Dr. Shahriyar Tavakoli, the medical director of the intensive care unit and section chief of pulmonary disease at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage. “He established a legacy that nobody can repeat.”

Institute known worldwide

The paneled walls outside Dr. Weil's office practically buckle under a staggering number of framed certificates, awards and honors, including the American Heart Association's lifetime achievement award for his contributions to emergency cardiovascular care.

Earlier this month, Weil was recognized by the World Federation of Societies of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine in Florence, Italy.

But that's not what motivates him.

“The biggest reward is how many people we've trained, all the physicians who have gone off to become leaders in their fields,” he said. “I value human talents, not material things.”

That's quickly apparent at the Weil Institute for Critical Care Medicine in Rancho Mirage.

“I would just as soon have my name off it, but that was one of the conditions,” Weil said of the grants and donations that led to the construction of the 25,000-square-foot institute. The facility was formerly located in a smaller building in Palm Springs.

“Our real goal here has been to literally save lives,” he said.

The institute is not fancy, but it is efficient and effective, housing radioisotopic and bacteriological laboratories in addition to other research and educational facilities.

Work by the institute's researchers have led to 24 U.S. patents, the creation of such life-saving equipment as defibrillators and chest compressors, and the method used to measure levels of shock.

The focus is critical care medicine — a complex, multi-disciplinary branch of medicine concerned with patients who are critically ill and usually require intense monitoring. The institute trains doctors who go on to become specialists in the field.

“Unfortunately, it's not something that everybody realizes is here,” said Gloria Greer, the former publicist for the facility. “The institute is known better around the world than it is (in the Coachella Valley).”

Tavakoli said Dr. Weil is a household name among many doctors.

“Of course, whoever is involved in the field of critical care or emergency medicine, they know him,” he said. “That's what they study in school.”

The doctor is in

In his office, Weil leans back in a chair, sipping orange juice from a glass goblet and eating half of a chicken sandwich.

He doesn't touch the potato chips.

These days, Weil moves a little slower than he used to and relies on a walker to get around — an effect of myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disorder that makes the muscles weak.

The disease forced him to give up his favorite sport, tennis. In order to stay active, he swims nearly every day. “Medication helps, but it's not perfect,” he said.

He continues to be a force at the institute, even though he stepped down as institute president in 2007. He's still there nearly every day, writing, reading, reviewing journals and meeting with classes of trainees.

That passion to help others is a trademark of Dr. Weil.

As a child, Susan Weil, the doctor's daughter, remembers long family road trips to national parks.

“We'd always see accidents on the way, and we'd have to pull over,” she said. “He'd take care of the victim, ride in the ambulance and go to the local hospital with the injured person before we could get back on our route to vacation.”

He enjoyed being on call at the hospital on New Year's Eve — the night with the most car accidents, and the most opportunity to help people.

The doctor's dedication inspired Susan Weil to go into medicine herself. At age 14, she began working in her father's office, later went to medical school and eventually became a successful gynecologist.

“I was awed by his love of his job and his ability to handle situations that others couldn't,” she said. “I watched him take care of patients and listen to hearts, and I've seen him at their bedsides. It was inspiring.”

Sometimes she is still approached by people who rave about her father — everything from “Your father saved my life” to “Your father had such an impact on my life.”

It happened again just six months ago at a medical conference.

“One of the other doctors at the conference was a pulmonologist,” she said. “He was totally flabbergasted and awed when he found out I was related to the Dr. Weil.”

There's good reason that Dr. Weil inspires that kind of awe in people.

Back in the 1950s, there was a gaping hole in medical care: Many patients died during the night, as they recovered from surgery or a serious illness. They were discovered by nurses making their rounds, only after it was too late.

Weil came up with a solution: What if they could monitor severely ill patients? What if there was an alarm system that could signal when their body became distressed? What if there was a team of specially trained physicians who could respond?

It was a novel idea for the era. But within a decade, almost every hospital in the country had adopted Weil's concept — and the modern intensive care unit was born.

“It was a very simple idea, really. We just had to find a way to check vital signs continually,” he said. “So if a patient started having trouble, a nurse or doctor could intervene in that critical moment and potentially save them.”

Weil's dreams have become the standard for saving lives.

“Because of his work and research, now we take care of our patients better and can support them in the ICU,” Tavakoli said. “It all started with minute-by-minute monitoring, and that's something we still implement.”

Community-minded

The first time Bary Freed met Weil in 1994, he was apprehensive of the small doctor with big ideas.

Weil had this grandiose plan to make CPR easy and accessible for everyone in the community to learn.

As fire chief for the city of Palm Springs, Freed knew all the rules and regulations. The fire department had already been providing CPR training for professionals who needed certification, and they did so under the strict guidelines set by the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association.

But Dr. Max Harry Weil had other ideas.

His goal was to integrate CPR into the community in every way possible. He wanted to hold health fairs where people could learn the basics of CPR in an hour or less, invite the public into free classes, bring seminars into the schools.

“That was a completely new concept,” Freed said. “I wondered what kind of Pandora's box were we opening up? Would we be doing more damage than good?”

Freed was soon swayed by Weil and became a staunch supporter of the community CPR concept.

“I investigated his background, and was so impressed by the depth and breadth of his background and training,” Freed said. “When I realized that he wasn't a fly-by-night soothsayer, that changed everything.”

Weil's mission was inspired by the death of his colleague and best friend, Dr. Herbert Shubin, who collapsed while hiking in the Sierra Nevadas in 1975. Though Shubin's wife was a skilled nurse, she was unable to resuscitate him.

“That had a profound effect on my life,” Weil said.

“I have never seen my father as devastated as that,” Susan Weil said. “That was probably the worst time in our lives as a family.”

But the tragedy gave Weil even more motivation to achieve his goals — and do it in the name of someone he loved.

The Weil Institute now trains about 2,000 students and 600 adults in the Coachella Valley each year through community classes.

Weil also was instrumental in the recent passage of the Good Samaritan Protection Act, introduced by state Sen. John Benoit, R-Bermuda Dunes.

The bill protects emergency service volunteer workers who perform disaster services.

“I've never seen somebody as dedicated as Dr. Weil to helping people live,” Freet said.

Weil simply believes that is what he was meant to do.

“It's a huge responsibility that doctors have, to be there when people are ushered into this earth and to be there at the time of death,” he said. “It's something that I take very seriously.”

Maggie Downs is a features reporter for The Desert Sun. She can be reached at 778-6435 or maggie.downs@thedesertsun.com.