Chapter 161: The Experiment... [3]
Hahaha...
I swear I could still hear it echoing in my ears.
No, wait. I was actually smiling.
“Yes, yes. If you want water, drink water. But remember, if you drink too much, you’ll just vomit it back up. Keep that in mind. You’re rejecting actual treatment out of pure instinct.”
If Liston had come at me with force, I might not have just been stunned. I probably would have cried. But thankfully, he respected me quite a bit. Thanks to that, our poor students were allowed to drink some water.
The idea of having to restrain yourself when you’re thirsty... Where on earth did that come from?
I mean, thirst did not automatically mean dehydration, but—
Huh?
Dehydration was terrifying. People died from that. Did they not know humans were seventy percent water?
Maybe they did not.
“Hey, you’re drinking a bit much, aren’t you? Didn’t you have diarrhea earlier? If you drink more now, you’ll just get it again.”
Despite my concerns, Liston kept talking nonsense. Naturally, I was not saying anything aloud. I was only thinking it to myself.
But I knew.
Even if I argued, it would not change the outcome.
“I’m sorry, Professor. I’m just so thirsty.”
“Alright, fine. It’s not a bad idea to let them experience the patient’s suffering firsthand. The patient still has to fast, though.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s how you survive. As long as you’re healthy, and we’re okay too, right?”
Liston had this strange fondness for calling diseases his favorite, just like he did with his scalpel. I did not even know how to respond to that. He looked at that massive surgical knife and said that, if he had to, he would cut himself with it, not to kill, but to give blood.
Whew.
Which, in my opinion, still sounded an awful lot like saying he would kill me.
“Thank you!”
One of the students thanked me and drank the water I had carefully boiled and distilled.
Did he even realize?
I should have been the one thanking him. Sure, I was the one who had caused this situation, but I really had not meant for it to become an experiment.
“But are the students in the other room still alright?”
“Just in case, I’ll check on them again before bed.”
“Yeah, good idea. Judging by these guys, they might not be okay either. And...”
Liston was not just rambling nonsense. He suddenly looked down at his own belly, then glanced around at the others who had also drunk the boiled water, and continued.
“I think your theory might be right. That odd-looking stuff... It seems like Miasma. Though, I suppose that doesn’t mean the air theory is completely wrong. It can’t be that simple...”
“Yes, yes.”
Just when things seemed to be going well, they had to veer into nonsense.
Why was the air theory not completely wrong?
Okay, yes, bacteria and viruses can spread through the air if an infected person sneezes or coughs right in front of you. But generally, no. That’s not how it works.
I wanted to say that, but I could not, because technically, they were not entirely wrong.
Which made me look like the ignorant one.
I should have anticipated this reaction.
“Yes, I’m now even more convinced it’s in the air,” Blundell said.
Whew...
“Isn’t it already proven that foul-smelling water contains a lot of Miasma?”
“Right. After boiling and distilling it, the smell almost vanished. And with it, the Miasma. It’s the discovery of the century.”
I never expected to be in a conversation where people linked “smell” to “Miasma” as scientific proof.
I shouldn’t be worrying about whether I’m advancing medicine too quickly...
Still, I was uneasy. It was never easy. I listened to the ongoing discussion with a half-defeated look, but I was still glad we were making any progress at all.
“I’ll write a thesis on this. Pyeong, don’t worry. I’ll make sure to include your name. And instead of just publishing it, let’s go present it at the Paris conference together.”
“Oh... That might work. But those barbarians... Do you think they’ll understand our theory?”
“We’ll prove it again on-site.”
“Aha. There’s a simple method.”
Paris.
A city I had never visited, even in my previous life. There had been this strange bias back then. Senior doctors said American conferences were for real study, while European ones were for show. You could not even go unless you had seniority.
Me?
I died before I ever got that far.
Anyway, we’ll need proof.
I did not ask what he meant by proof. I was almost certain he planned to do exactly what we had just done here.
What was the river in Paris again?
Ah, right. The Seine.
But was it as dirty as the Thames? London was the only place I had learned about urban pollution in school.
Just in case... I should prepare. No, what am I even thinking?
Being surrounded by nineteenth-century people was turning me into one of them. This should not be happening.
But in this world, ignorance was practically innocent. For a moment, I recalled every insult I had ever heard about the French. If even half of them were true, the French were not people.
Wouldn’t it be fine to feed it to them too? Our students drank it, after all.
Caught in that bitter thought, I stood up. Even the students who were not racists had drunk it. Well, except for my few close companions, most of them were somewhat like that.
I hated it all.
But not enough to let them die.
“Oh, shall we go?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go together. Come on.”
“Yes!”
So I stood, and Liston and Blundell, still deep in their bizarre ideas, like feeding poison to flies or something about rat droppings, followed. When the three professors moved, the others followed too.
But the students’ faces were not as bright as ours. The symptoms in our early test subjects had started to improve, but some of them still looked worse for wear.
Two students who had drunk Thames water had soiled themselves. Even those who drank the boiled water afterward looked uneasy.
Sigh.
But we could not pretend everything was fine. What mattered most now were not those with imagined pain, but those who were truly suffering.
“Ugh...”
We had told them to speak up if it hurt, but we were wrong.
When something hurt that much, you could not speak.
In reality, the loudest patients in the ER were often the least sick. Of course, I said that at the risk of being stabbed by someone with kidney stones, but when someone’s vitals were collapsing from real pain, they were too far gone to make a sound.
I knew.
I had been on trauma duty.
“He has a fever.”
“Huh. That’s odd.”
“What?”
“Weren’t the first kids who got sick the weaker ones? But these guys look even worse.”
Ah.
I see.
You think that way because you do not know it is a toxin.
Ugh.
How was I supposed to explain this?
After a moment’s thought, I decided to explain it in terms they could understand. Sure, it might cause misunderstandings, but it would work.
“Didn’t those earlier students get better because they vomited and had diarrhea right away?”
“Aha... So Hippocrates—”
“No, no. This has nothing to do with the four humors.”
“Huh? Why not? Vomiting and diarrhea happen because there’s too much fluid in the body.”
“That’s not it. It’s the Miasma. If it were just excess fluid, why would it only happen after exposure to Miasma?”
“Huh? Uh...?”
Good.
Liston was stunned.
Watching that big man freeze mid-thought was almost funny.
Almost.
It was still scary, though.
I did not stop.
“If Miasma was expelled through vomiting and diarrhea... what do you think caused them to improve?”
“Uh... that kind of makes sense?”
Liston had completely shut down.
That was fine. He was not going to be much help here anyway. There was not much anyone could do right now, other than endure the vomiting and diarrhea. Not even Liston could stop that.
Fever... a sign of infection. That’s not good. The only relief is...
The fevers were not too high. Sure, I was checking with the palm of my hand. Primitive, I knew. But they were not burning hot. And yes, thermometers existed, but they were awkward and slow. Even thermometers required scientific infrastructure to work properly.
Only two people have fevers, and they’re both on the corpse-handling side. Hm... Must be staph.
The students who ingested E. coli did not develop fevers, likely because their gut flora was already strong. They were having more severe diarrhea and vomiting than the first group, but a lack of fever did not mean the bacteria had not entered their bloodstream.
Of course, if they had underlying conditions like diabetes, they might not show fever. But let’s be honest. In the nineteenth century, someone that age with diabetes probably would not live long. That was not cruel. It was a fact.
Insulin had not even been invented yet.
“Okay, drink some water. Drink it while you’re still conscious!”
“If I drink more, I’m just going to throw it up again...”
“Still, some of it gets absorbed. That means it entered your system. See? Miasma, diluted!”
“Ugh... That damn... one hundred million...”
If he lost consciousness, I would have to resort to IV fluids. That was risky. Well, if he went into Hypovolemic Shock, I would have no choice. But we were not there yet.
For now, he had to drink.
The students resisted, but it did not matter. Liston, back from his daze, smacked one of them in the back of the head.
The guy’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull.
I felt relieved.
“Do you want to die?”
Of course, that was not really the issue. Why would someone actually want to die when they might really die?
And once they did, well, there was a good chance it would just be accepted.
My brother was terrifying.
“Okay, I’ll drink it.”
“Good. Drink while you’re still talking.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked at Liston with a face full of resentment, clearly still smarting from the blow, but he did not complain. He looked too sick for that. Maybe the pain had temporarily made him forget the stomachache.
“You guys aren’t drinking?”
“Okay, okay, I’ll drink it.”
“You heard me earlier, right? If this is Miasma, then, just as our Pyeong said, drinking water is the cure!”
Oh...
Yes.
This was why I liked Liston. He understood everything during that brief stunned silence.
He had a bright future ahead.