A well-respected physician must choose whether to save a bumbling friend or the ne’er-do-well husband of the woman he loves. The blowhards, the know-it-alls, and the impecunious are all targets for Shaw’s incisive wit.

          The thesis of this play, revolutionary for its time, was that medical doctors inevitably face a dilemma between the need to care for their patients and the need to practice often unnecessary operations on them in order to earn their livelihood. It was modelled on the behaviour of a prominent Ear Nose and Throat specialist in London who had developed a simple and harmless operation to remove the uvula. This benefitted none of his patients but made the surgeon concered a great deal of money. The play also attacked aspects of the germ theory of disease, and included socialist and anti-vivisectionist viewpoints.