First, Do No Harm

Vienna in the 17th century teeters on the boundary between the Western and Eastern halves of the 'civilized world'. While the capital of the Holy Roman Empire remains an indomitable crossroads of learning and commerce, the city still clings to the superstitions of the past, its people unable to completely release old prejudices.

Less blinded by old hatreds, Dietrich is motivated by little else than a physician's passion to heal and an endless pursuit of knowledge. Where other nobility overlook the needs of the common people, he commits himself to a life of city-service and study, patrolling the streets by night.

His world, simple and uncomplicated, is little more than an endless cycle of study and patrol. Even when he discovers a dead man while on his nightly patrol, he is intrigued initially more by the nature of the man's death than the loss of life.

But as his inspection discovers the ravages of a new disease, the cycle of uncomplicated living is broken. The body, wracked with dark decay and desolation in a way that no physician has ever seen, spreads with a virulence that confounds every mind in the city.

Shocked into action, Dietrich has no choice but to marshal his courage and faith to combat the virulent disease baptizing all in a sacrament of indiscriminate death.

And then, of course, there are the two strange, bloodless marks on the man's chest to consider...

First, Do No Harm is a historical fiction novel telling a tale of survival and superstition set against the backdrop of the Black Death in 17th-century Austria. Mixing morality and fanaticism in equal measure, the work is a distinctive blend of genre fiction and a medical thriller encapsulating the struggle of man to move away from old hatreds to embrace new virtues against implacable, unknowable forces.