Edinburgh 1828 - a tale of two cities, the New Town, home to the elegant, the Old Town, home to the homeless and yet between them, home to the most famous school of medicine in the world. However that world could not yet boast any of those soothing securities that we take for granted today - anaesthesia, antibiotics, aseptic surgery, dental conservation and at, a simpler level, running water. A junior doctor, Sandy Webster, stumbling by chance on what we would now call an anaesthetic agent, comes into direct conflict with a senior doctor who considers it worthless and dangerous and in no need of any name but his fellow lodger and friend, James Simpson disagrees. His attempts to discover bodies for the anatomy rooms, take him to a remote graveyard and into the Grassmarket, where two enterprising Irishmen have access to a seemingly endless supply. A rival for the affections of Caroline, his childhood sweetheart, a Lord Provost losing his clothes in a spa opened by Caroline's father, major surgery on the kitchen table, a hairy landlord straight from the Old Testament,s a Polish mesmerist and a lovesick horse weave around him a web of lunacy from which it seems, he can never escape.