Doctor Therne

by H. Rider Haggard

First published 1898

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3.6(114)

Dr James Therne is a capable physician whose career and finances are damaged by professional rivalry. Although he understands the value of vaccination, he adopts the anti-vaccination cause to win political support and a parliamentary seat, allowing ambition to override his medical judgement.

A smallpox epidemic in Dunchester turns that compromise into a public catastrophe and a private tragedy. Written as a direct intervention in the Victorian vaccination controversy, the novel traces how misinformation, electoral opportunism and professional cowardice can convert preventable disease into mass death.