This "what-if" episode imagines what would happen in the event of a nuclear strike on Los Angeles. Dr. Styner and his colleagues are at a warehouse outside the city for a training session, but must try to make their way back to the devastated city after the nuclear attack. Along the way they try to treat and save as many injured and radiation-poisoned patients as they can with what little medicine they have and are forced by circumstances to decide which patients can be saved--and which ones they'll have to let die.

Little known but true story about an Army doctor who tried to save Abraham Lincoln's life. Dr. Charles A. Leale was in the audience at Ford's Theater when John Wilkes Booth fired the fatal shot at President Lincoln. For 12 hours Leale and two other doctors worked desperately against death.

Obsessively self-reliant Dr. Robert Parker faces an uncertain future and an extended period of reliance on an iron lung (and on other people) after he contracts a case of polio.

A young boy, neglected by his wealthy parents, builds a dream world of his own with the help of his tattered teddy bear, Mr. Bodine. This aggravates his asthmatic condition, as he is allergic to the teddy bear.

Eight-year old Jonno's speech is garbled because of a cleft palate he was born with. Now kids mock him and he's retreating into a lonely world of his own. Grandfather's too elderly to do anything. What can teenage brother Pete do to help.

An abandoned baby grows up in a hospital ward when an extensive series of surgical procedures is necessary to repair the damage caused when the infant's mother forced her to ingest caustic household lye.

Two mothers leave their children, a little girl and a baby boy, alone downstairs. The girl discovers a lighter and starts a blaze that engulfs them both. At the hospital, one mother holds the other responsible for what happened.

Pretty, young Helen has a collapsing colon. Unless she consents to surgery to open up a new elimination canal and container bag, she will die. But what will that mean to a young woman's self-image and life style. Daring topic for its time.

A county coroner's investigation will exonerate or incriminate a distraught spinsterish woman who was alone with her younger sister's baby boy when the infant died suddenly and unexpectedly.

A young husband must inform his pregnant wife that she's been diagnosed with fatal leukemia. Concern now shifts to the expected baby's survival. Dr. Styner wages an extended battle in the delivery room for the newborn's survival.

After collapsing on stairs, winsome young Annie is discovered to have a heart condition. Now doctors must operate to save her, but can they after her heart stops.

A young and healthy woman is diagnosed with breast cancer only a week before her wedding. Surgery must be performed as soon as possible. She becomes depressed and contemplates suicide.

An injured sailor is helicoptered onto a naval hospital ship for treatment. There the head doctor suddenly starts treating his staff angrily. It appears he has a personal stake in the sailor's survival.

On the way westward in the year 1867, a wagon train in a barren wilderness is suddenly hit by an outbreak of Cholera, and the one doctor among them is at odds to contain it.

Swedish immigrant Albert plays viola in a symphony orchestra. But his hearing is getting worse, so he's let go. Also, his social life is being held back. An operation can correct the problem, but will it stay fixed, and how to pay.

The story of the contribution of the anesthesiologist to medicine. An elderly woman must undergo a thyroid operation. A large part of the success of such an operation is in the deft hands and decisions of the anesthesiologist.

Due to circumstances at home, a young man needs to help take care of his mom and ailing father. He can't finish college and resorts to Professional Wrestling to make money. Can he restore his appearance and his dignity?

This is the story of Alexis St. Martin, a young fur trapper who was shot in the side and was used by Dr. William Beaumont for research into the function of the human digestive system.

After sending his wife away, Jim falls again and his condition worsens to the point where he decides to undergo experimental surgery on his spine.

An aging actor has been a paraplegic for five years. Confined to bed, he turns to the bottle, maundering over his situation. That is, until a public health nurse arrives. Now he feels sensations in his legs. Is it just wishful thinking.

A young wife and mother is suddenly stricken with a brain aneurysm. Now the couple must decide between short-term treatment hoping for no recurrence, or risk delicate brain surgery to remedy the problem.

Shortly before completing his residency and beginning his own practice, a resident internist is stunned when a routine chest X-Ray reveals that he has contracted an active case of tuberculosis.

After unsuccessfully attempting to kill her baby, Frances Dunbar voluntarily admits herself to a state psychiatric institution where she receives treatment that slowly helps her to realize the reasons for her troubled mental state.

A successful photographer's model is told she is a victim of multiple sclerosis. Her unsympathetic husband decides he now wants a divorce.

In 1884, pioneering surgeon Dr. William Stewart Halstead finds that he and three colleagues are slowly but surely becoming seriously addicted to the cocaine that they have been using in anesthetic self-experiments.