The Black Sleep story
Set in England in 1872, the story concerned a prominent, knighted surgeon whose wife has fallen into a coma caused by a deep-seated brain tumor. Due to medicine's state of the art at the time, he does not know how to reach the tumor without risking brain damage or death to the woman he loves, so he undertakes to secretly experiment on the brains of living, but involuntary, human subjects who are under the influence of a powerful Indian anesthetic, Nind Andhera, which he calls the "Black Sleep". Once he has finished his experiment, surviving subjects are revived and placed, in seriously degenerated and mutilated states, in a hidden cellar in the gloomy, abandoned country abbey where he conducts his experiments.
9 total · 6 major · 3 minor
| Theme | Level | Motivation |
|---|---|---|
| husband and wife | major | Sir Joel Cadman and Angelina Cadman. |
| obsession | major | Sir Joel Cadman was obsessed with saving his wife from dying from a brain tumor. |
| romantic love | major | Sir Joel Cadman loved his wife Angelina Cadman and tried to save her life after she had fallen into a coma caused by a deep-seated brain tumor. |
| suspended animation | major | Sir Joel Cadman used suspended animation to save Dr. Gordon Ramsay from being hanged in order that he might assist Cadman in his experiments. He also placed subjects in suspended animation and performed exploratory surgeries on their brains. |
| the good of the many vs. the needs of the few | major | Sir Joel Cadman performed unnecessary exploratory brain surgeries on living people in order to advance medical knowledge and possibly save the lives of people with brain tumors, like his wife. |
| unethical human experimentation | major | Sir Joel Cadman performed unnecessary exploratory brain surgeries on living people in order to advance medical knowledge and possibly save the lives of people with brain tumors, like his wife. |
| capital punishment | minor | Sir Joel Cadman opposed the death penalty. |
| facing one's own execution | minor | Dr. Gordon Ramsay was to be hanged for the murder of a man after having been convicted on circumstantial evidence. |
| phrenology | minor | Dr. Gordon Ramsay dismissed phrenological theories as disproved. |