The novel by Anatoly Elsner, an outstanding writer of the Silver Age, is the first in Russian literature to address the figure of a maniac doctor. Elsner anticipates and for the first time outlines the plot, without which it is impossible to imagine the literature and cinema of the 20th and 21st centuries. What does the doctor’s doubt about the sacred status of the Hippocratic oath and the covenant “Do no harm” lead to? The medical genius of Dr. Kandinsky requires experiments on patients, and his art of persuasion makes obedient slaves out of his charges. Dr. Death is drawing more and more people into his diabolical games, but a sudden feeling for one of the women he is supposed to care for seems to make him stop... How will the nightmare full of suffering and innocent victims end?