Bacteriologist Dr. Neil Anderson is asked by the hospital authorities to try and discover what disease could possibly have transformed Martin Klein, a healthy medical student, into a grotesque corpse within hours. His investigation uncovers an unlikely link between Klein's routine participation in testing a new drug and the research laboratories of Dr. Jacob Strauss, one of the foremost medical scientists of his day... Was Klein's death purely medical mishap? Or was it, as Anderson begins to suspect, the result of something infinitely more sinister?