Set in England 1872 the story concerned a prominent kinghied surgeon whose wife has fallen into a coma caused by a deep-seated brain tumor Due to medicine's stare 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 experment on the brains of living but involuntary human subjects who are under the influence of a influence of a powerful Indian anesthetic Nind Andhera which he he calls the "The Black Sleep" Once he has finished his experimente 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 expermente.