Chapter 160: The Experiment... [2]
“But Pyeong?”
“Yes?”
“Is it really okay to feed him more of this?”
“Ah.”
Liston was standing there holding a glass of water from the Thames.
Wait. When did he get that?
There was so much of it, too. I was so stunned that I even asked myself that question aloud. With his other hand, he was holding the head of a student who was already vomiting, and he looked at me. I got the feeling that if I even nodded slightly, he would somehow know that I understood what was in the water.
“Oh, no! It needs to be diluted... but not with that!”
“Right? I thought something felt off too.”
“Yes, yes.”
“But.”
“Yes?”
“If the cause is Miasma, like you said... and if the Miasma is in the Thames water.”
“Yes?”
“Then isn’t it pointless to dilute it with water from here? Even if it’s been boiled, it’s still Thames water, isn’t it?”
“Ah...”
Right.
It was.
Surprisingly, London at this time did have a water supply system. It had existed since the sixteenth century, though it was nothing like the modern systems we imagine.
The upper class... Our dear Alfred has water brought in from upstream, I hear.
Apparently, waterworks had once been installed individually, but by now there were about ten companies supplying it. The problem was that no one, not the water companies, not the doctors, not even the city officials, understood where water should actually come from.
Rich neighborhoods just paid more for water from upstream because it smelled better.
The poor?
They were drinking raw sewage from the Thames.
That was London for you, overflowing with poverty. In other words, most people were unknowingly drinking water full of feces.
I... really need to fix this soon.
Cholera outbreaks. Diarrhea for no known reason. Every disease imaginable.
For a second, I felt dizzy. But since returning to the nineteenth century, I had developed a helpful habit. If you focused on every single disaster here, you would lose your mind.
“Well... it’s been boiled, at least. Ah! Let’s test the water. If there’s no Miasma in this batch—”
“Ah, right! Yes, that’s it!”
Improvements had to come one step at a time. Right now, I needed to focus on hospitals, not public health. We had to stop people from calling hospitals “houses of death.”
It was prideful to say this as a doctor from the twenty-first century, but I had every right to feel that urgency.
“Oh... no. The enemy is...”
That was why I needed Liston.
Or rather, it was why Liston listened to me.
Did you see him earlier? Holding back a man who was about to pass out and trying to pour water down his throat. That was execution. That was follow-through.
Sure, I boiled and even distilled the water. And when Liston looked at it under the microscope for a long time, he seemed impressed. Even though what he saw was just dead bacteria, which he called Miasma, it was enough to convince him.
“I think this could serve as evidence.”
“No, no, not just evidence. This is great! Let me drink this too!”
“What?”
“There’s a problem. You drank it all earlier. Alright, we’ll do it like this. Look, everyone else is trying their best. I’m not going to spare myself either. Shouldn’t we all contribute to the advancement of medicine?”
“...What?”
I was dumbfounded.
What the hell was he saying?
He looked clueless, but I knew exactly what he was trying to do.
You’re actually going to drink that water...?
Sure, what he saw under the microscope was just dead germs. I did not dare say it because I knew it would raise suspicion. So I smiled and nodded as if it was fine.
“Yes, drink up.”
I kept up appearances, smiling as I drank the water. Liston, Blundell, and the students around me started murmuring in admiration. “Wow, Pyeong is really at the forefront of medicine,” they said.
I was dying of embarrassment.
“Wow.”
“Bleghhh.”
“My stomach...”
Meanwhile, I had literally just drunk sewer water and liquid extracted from a corpse.
“Wow.”
“Bleghhh.”
“My stomach...”
In the end, everyone who was not part of the experiment took a sip. Only then could I administer the remaining distilled water to the patients. Ideally, I would give it intravenously, not because I preferred injections, but because it would be absorbed better that way.
“Bleghh.”
“Urgh.”
But that was not an option if they were vomiting everything up.
So, an IV?
That was tricky.
It’s not like IV needles don’t exist... but still.
Just because this was a primitive era did not mean syringes did not exist. They did, but they were crude. Basically, they had not advanced much since the Greek era.
I made a special one, though.
Yes, I had crafted a proper injection needle when I was experimenting on that body I dug up and reassembled.
Technology-wise, it’s fine... but sterilization?
That was the real issue. The fluid and needle could not be perfectly sterilized. During surgery, I already worried about this. But injecting something directly into the bloodstream?
Distilled water might seem clean, but if any bacteria remained, it could cause sepsis.
I’ll save this option for emergencies only. Besides, Blundell is too eager.
Blundell was open in a way different from Liston. He was eager to learn from me. That was good, but dangerous. He was the type to see a syringe and immediately try a blood transfusion.
Ugh.
“Drink!”
“Urgh, ugh!”
With all that going on, I decided to put off the IV plan for now. The room descended into chaos again. People were retching, but we had to keep going. Drinking this water was the only chance they had.
I did feel bad, though.
“If it’s too much, I’ll drink the rest later.”
“Okay... No, wait, what even is this?!”
Even Liston, the world-famous surgeon, sat down in a corner shaking his head. Blundell joined him.
Meanwhile, I, knowing this was the only way to save lives, kept working. They stared at me and whispered.
“If you look closely, he’s the most brutal of us all.”
“Right? It’s like he doesn’t care about the patients’ pain.”
“Maybe that kind of cold-bloodedness is what it takes to advance medicine.”
“Pyeong’s cruelty might actually be helping.”
“He’s my friend, but when he gets like this? Terrifying.”
Blundell, Liston, Colin, Alfred, and Joseph.
Lunatics, the lot of them.
They were the ones who panicked when they should be calm and acted bold when they should hesitate. I wanted to scream, “I’m from the twenty-first century. I know what I’m doing!” But if I yelled, they would probably dissect me and use me as a case study.
So I just kept making them drink.
“Drink up!”
“Blehh, blehh!”
After over an hour of this, I was completely drained. But the symptoms in the critical patients were clearly improving. Most of them should recover by tomorrow or the day after. That said, the water they had drunk was still so questionable that I could not predict what kind of infection might develop.
But... humans are stronger than you think. Especially people from this era.
If a twenty-first-century Korean drank that water, there would be a ninety percent chance of ending up in the ICU. That was not an exaggeration.
But the people here?
They had been drinking filth since childhood. Slums did not even have toilets. People simply relieved themselves in alleys.
What about food?
Refrigerators? What are those? They’d eat anything that wasn’t crawling off the plate.
In London’s damp climate, food spoiled quickly, but the poor still ate it.
I had to trust them.
“Why are you smiling like that? Like some demon after drinking water. Have you lost your mind?”
Just as I was trying to console myself, Liston came over and started swearing at me.
What a devil.
I was trying to save lives, and I got insulted?
You’re the one who brought the water in the first place!
I was honestly torn.
Then he said the worst thing.
“This is common sense.”
Liston was not the type to care how others reacted. Not out of arrogance, but because he had the strength to stand by his beliefs. That included how he dealt with me, so I just kept quiet.
“Think about it, Pyeong. I want to be a surgeon, so maybe I can overlook some things.”
It sounded like he was trying to teach me something.
He was smart and had potential, sure, but what could I learn from Liston?
Maybe how to build physical strength?
But that was not something you could just learn.
I nodded anyway, just to survive.
“What’s vomiting and diarrhea, anyway? Isn’t it just water leaving the body?”
“Ah... yes.”
He was not wrong, so I nodded again.
“So what happens if there’s no water?”
“...Huh?”
“Then nothing will come out. Don’t give water to people who have diarrhea or vomiting. That’s common sense.”
“Ah...”
“Ha! Surprised, aren’t you? Thought so.”
“Ah...”
I finally understood how much emotion could be packed into so few words, and why that made people like him so easy to misunderstand.
Liston continued, thinking I was impressed.
“It’s right to drain the water. Just like bleeding. Haha. This is the real thing, Pyeong. Pure, raw plain broth, right?”