This is an early dramatization of something we know better a century later: the difficulty of translating medical scientific knowledge into political action. Ibsen's well-intentioned blustery doctor heroically fails. Partly this is because the local democratic processes are quite cynical (powerful people prevent him from getting his information to the citizens), and partly because Dr. Stockmann suffers from a professional blindness that keeps him from understanding how anyone could possibly disagree that his scientific “truth” (he uses the world frequently) requires rebuilding the town's waterworks. He is a classic case of virtue-based ethics sacrificing outcome for principle.

The genesis of the play suggests that Ibsen, angry himself at European drama critics' response to his play, Ghosts, was blind to his protagonist's blindness. One interesting medical approach to the play is to see Dr. Stockmann's town as a resistant patient.

The playwright Arthur Miller adapted this play in the 1950s for its strong minority rights message at a time when many U.S. artists with liberal politics were being viewed by those in power as enemies of the people. Miller keeps Dr. Stockmann's strong idealism and mistrust of the majority but shortens and softens his tirades in which pro-minority is hard to distinguish from arguments for genetic superiority.