Potential pitfalls to avoid: not making the protagonist too one-dimensional, giving the doctor a believable back story, ensuring medical details about lupus are accurate enough to be believable but fictional methods are clearly pseudoscientific.
A small, insular town nestled in the mountains of Vermont, known for its isolation and traditional values. Dr. Ambrose Halloway, a once-renowned immunologist, now operates a private clinic there, peddling controversial therapies after his fall from grace in the medical community. spanking lupus link
Dr. Halloway, haunted by his wife’s death from lupus, becomes obsessed with the idea that physical trauma can “reboot” the immune system. After reading discredited Victorian-era texts, he develops an unorthodox treatment involving controlled corporal punishment—spankings—he believes can suppress autoimmune responses by reducing stress-induced inflammation. Despite lacking medical evidence, he attracts vulnerable patients from across the country desperate for alternatives to lupus’s debilitating effects. Potential pitfalls to avoid: not making the protagonist
That's a solid structure. Need to avoid any real medical inaccuracies, but since it's fiction, creative license is okay. Make sure the story doesn't suggest any real link between the two. Title ideas: "The Corporal Cure", "Spanking the Symptoms", "The Lupus Deception", etc. Maybe a metaphor for fighting illness with brute force instead of proper treatment. but since it's fiction
Another angle: maybe a fictional medical study in the story suggests a link between physical trauma (like spankings) and the onset of lupus. The story could follow a researcher uncovering this connection or someone trying to debunk it.