"But as long as Dal could remember, he had wanted to be a doctor. From the first time he had seen a General Practice Patrol ship landing in his home city to fight the plague that was killing his people by the thousands, he had known that this was what he wanted more than anything else: to be a physician of Hospital Earth . . ."Alan E. Nourse was both a science fiction writer and a physician, publishing many works of fiction and non-fiction in his lifetime.