Finding himself in search of employment in an early Victorian London whose medics are still obsessed with curious home-brew cures, leeches and dismemberment, young doctor and germ theory proponent Mortimer Granville stumbles into one of the few fields of medicine he is not already at odds with - female hysteria.

Described by leading doctor - and Granville's new employer - Robert Dalrymple as "stemming from an overactive uterus", most mild cases require a simple, albeit time-consuming and repetitive regular treatment: manual stimulation.

Granville's first few weeks in Dalrymple's practice go so well that the senior doctor invites him to consider becoming a partner, and suggests that Mortimer may, in time, marry his youngest daughter Emily, a polite and proper Victorian lady, student of Chopin and phrenology. Dalrymple's elder daughter, Charlotte, is a wayward, wild soul who frustrates her father by frittering money away upon a laughable East End project to provide care, education and sanctuary to society's less desirable women and children.

However, the repetitive nature of the work is soon beginning to cause Mortimer to suffer from debilitating hand cramps, and his very hands-on career is at risk of being brought to a premature close. It is a chance stumble across his close friend Edmund's latest invention, that could hold the key to success and happiness.