The painter Dubedat is seriously ill with tuberculosis. His attractive wife, Jennifer, begs the famous doctor Sir Colenso Ridgeon—who has just been knighted—to help her husband, especially since the doctor has a remedy that only he knows how to administer properly. But Sir Colenso’s clinic is overcrowded, and the doctor faces the dilemma of whether to save the brilliant painter while condemning a “less valuable” person to certain death.