Chapter 17: Obstetrics and Gynecology Practicum [2]
Chapter 17: Obstetrics and Gynecology Practicum [2]
A maggot?
No...
Even if you were going to lie, you should at least make it believable.
In a sacred hospital, there was a maggot...
How far was the Dissection Room from here?
Not far at all.
Right.
Even here, if you just flared your nostrils a little...
was there not a faint rotten smell drifting in?
“Fuck.”
I cursed without thinking and reached behind my back.
Even then, I believed it could not be true, but something... damp caught on my hand.
Fuck.
“This... it’s real.”
“Of course it’s real. Why would I lie?”
Looking at the maggot smeared on my hand, my senior merely said that.
Joseph just watched too.
Professor.
Shouldn’t you of all people not be acting like this?
“That’s what I’m saying. A patient had been there.”
But Robert Liston looked the most at ease out of everyone there, overwhelmingly so.
No, maybe I should say he took it for granted.
If there was something like this where a patient had been... then that was exactly what shouldn’t happen.
Was it because he knew that no matter what insane nonsense he said, nobody would dare challenge him?
He was smiling while saying something that felt like it deserved a beating to death.
Smiling?
Did he smile?
What could I do?
All I could do was nod.
“Ah, yes.”
I got up from where I was and took off my outer coat to check the back.
There was yellowish fluid smeared on it.
Ah.
Pus...
At least the clothes were in better condition.
The bed, the bed I had been lying on, was truly insane.
Ugh...
This was insane.
I felt like I was losing my mind.
I really was.
This... these are all maggots...?
It looked as though flies had laid eggs and the place had then been neglected for quite some time, because they were swarming.
What in the world had happened to the patient who had been here?
They were probably dead.
“A while ago, the corpse that came into the Dissection Room had been here.”
So they died.
And then they dissected them.
“I heard this was the very person I got injured while dissecting.”
It had already been a week since he was injured.
So they had left it like this for a whole week?
I looked around as if in protest.
Of course, I could not glare at Robert Liston, so I glared at the other two instead.
Naturally, it was completely useless.
Joseph was a new student like me, and my senior was only one year ahead.
“Anyway... hmm.”
I stepped away from the bed and thanked the professor.
I did not know what exactly I was thanking him for, but with professors, it seemed you were just supposed to say thank you.
Even when they assigned work, they liked it if you ended the call with, “Thank you.”
Maybe the nineteenth century was no different, because Robert Liston liked it too.
“Yes, take care of yourself. Go home early today.”
“Yes, Professor. Thank you.”
I thanked him all the way to the end, and instead of going home, I headed toward the obstetrics ward.
“?”
“?”
Joseph and Alfred both looked puzzled as they watched me do that.
From their point of view, that was only natural.
Lord... they know not what they do...
Feeling as though I had become Jesus, I opened my mouth.
“Let’s... take a look at the state of the ward.”
“The state?”
“Our hospital is the best in London.”
Bullshit.
There was no way.
It could not be.
“If we keep holding on to the mindset that we’re the best... would that actually help us improve?”
Anyway, I was someone confident in one thing at least: talking people into things.
I might not be able to do it in front of someone like Liston because I was afraid I’d die, but in front of these two, I could do it as much as I wanted.
“Hmm.”
“Now that you put it that way... I guess that’s true?”
See?
It worked.
“Let’s look at it in our own way. What kind of thinking went into building and operating these wards? Wouldn’t understanding that... be helpful? Especially for you, Senior... your father might build you a hospital someday.”
“Ah, that’s true too.”
Really?
So you really were that rich, Senior.
Stay friends with me.
“Then let’s go.”
“You really are a junior with remarkable insight.”
“Our Pyeong had a reputation all the way back in Upton.”
I took the two rich young masters—no, dear friends—and headed to the obstetrics ward.
As I had seen earlier, the ward consisted of four rooms in total.
Each room held thirty patients.
Wow.
Even the second time seeing it, the shock had not faded.
A thirty-person room.
Did they not consider things like human rights?
“Shall we start by going in here?”
Trying to recall my memory, I headed into the room where I had seen the pregnant woman earlier.
I did not know whether it was because I had been too shocked before, or because I had not suspected anything then.
But the moment I stepped inside, an unpleasant smell hit me.
I did not cover my nose.
That would have been rude.
The two following behind me did not either.
They probably thought enduring things like this was some kind of badge of honor.
Their way of thinking must have been different from mine.
I would fix that somehow, even if it took time.
“But... why are the windows all the way up there?”
The room was truly wide, and the ceiling was so high that it even looked imposing.
At that point, did making even such a wide, tall place look filthy not count as a kind of talent?
Anyway, only then did I realize the windows were out of reach.
“I don’t know.”
Joseph could not answer.
“I do.”
Alfred was different.
“There used to be ordinary windows there, but apparently pregnant women sometimes jumped out of them.”
“What? Why... why?”
“Well, you came from Upton, and you’re from a well-off family too, so you might not know, but... the poor here are truly poor. Sometimes they kill themselves.”
“They commit suicide?”
“Yeah.”
So pregnant women had killed themselves.
If something that horrifying had happened, then they should have made some sort of welfare policy.
And their solution was to move the windows higher?
As expected of the nineteenth century...
Whatever you imagined, it always showed you something even worse.
For now... I’ll set that aside.
I’d just have to tell my senior not to do things like this when he built his hospital.
But right now, there was nothing I could do.
So I kept my mouth shut.
Instead, I examined the beds.
They were filthy enough that I did not need to look closely.
“Do they... not change these?”
“Hm? No, they do.”
“When?”
“When a patient is admitted... they bring their own. If they can’t, they get whatever was already being used.”
“Ah.”
Wow.
So that was the system.
That was why the earlier one had just been left there too.
This... this had to be fixed...
“But...”
“Why?”
What was I supposed to say to someone asking so innocently like that?
Should I just not say anything?
It did feel like there might be no point in saying anything.
From my standpoint, it would have been more beneficial to keep my mouth shut, get whatever qualification or license I needed first, and only then say something.
But what about all the patients who would die in the meantime?
If I truly did not know any better and left it alone... then maybe it would have been unavoidable.
But I knew, did I not?
I can see it all... the future.
I could see their future.
How many were dying, really?
By my common sense, it felt like it had to be over fifty percent.
Still, I had an instinct that it was lower than that.
If that many were dying, would people really keep coming?
Maybe people in the nineteenth century were stronger than I thought.
But no matter how strong they were, there were limits.
That patient I had seen before, the one who had probably had Appendicitis, had died too.
These people might be able to stay calm because they did not know any better.
But I was not like them.
“If things are this dirty, wouldn’t inflammation develop?”
“Does inflammation happen just because it’s dirty?”
Was that not right?
Did it not necessarily work that way?
Looking at Alfred and Joseph’s innocent faces, I felt like I might die first.
No... think of human lives.
If this were only a matter of people getting hurt a bit and that being the end of it, I would have stepped back.
But it was obvious people were going to die, so I had no choice.
“Well...”
How should I put it?
What should I say?
Ah.
Right.
It was not as though I had become a professor through trickery, was it?
A good idea flashed through my mind like lightning.
“Didn’t corpses always smell foul?”
“They do smell foul.”
“Then smell here too.”
First, I showed them my clothes.
“Ugh.”
Both of them pinched their noses shut.
It was my clothes.
Damn it.
“Doesn’t it smell like something you’ve smelled before?”
“Hm?”
“It smells like the pus I squeezed out of your hand, Senior.”
“Uh... yeah. I guess it does?”
“Couldn’t similar particles be the cause?”
I wondered how long I would have to keep saying particles instead of bacteria and viruses.
I felt pathetic, but fortunately, it worked.
“Ah. In that case... then this.”
“These particles could be anywhere.”
“Then everyone should die.”
“But we have skin.”
I wanted to talk about the immune system too.
But the moment I did, the image of the public square and the crucifix ending flashed through my mind.
Not even an ordinary crucifix, but a burning crucifix.
I heard burning at the stake was an unimaginably painful punishment.
There was no need for me to test that personally.
“The skin blocks them, but once it tears... the particles get inside.”
“Hmm. I see. But what about pregnant women? Their skin doesn’t tear, does it?”
Then where do you think the amniotic fluid comes bursting out from!
I felt like my greatest wish in life at that moment was to say that while smacking the back of his head.
That wish did come true later, too.
He was my senior, after all.
“When the amniotic fluid breaks, something must have torn for it to come out.”
“Ah. Wow... you really are... aren’t you a genius?”
Really.
It took you absurdly long just to say genius.
Of course I was a genius.
And I even had knowledge from the future.
Could you really wrap all that up with just the word genius?
“No, you flatter me.”
Of course, I was also enough of a genius in the realm of hiding my true thoughts that I could feign humility.
“This stuff could be all over the cloth. So in my opinion... not only should the linens be kept clean... I think hands should be washed too.”
“Hmm. That sounds like a bit of a leap in logic...”
A leap?
This?
“You think so?”
“Yes. If these particles were connected to handwashing... then we should have a problem too, even though we don’t wash them. It doesn’t seem connected to patient outcomes.”
No, no. That’s not right.
Try washing them.
Things will change if you wash them.
“I-is that so?”
“That’s right. You’re still a new student, so maybe you don’t know, but before we are medical students, we are scientists. Do you know what inductive reasoning is?”
I wanted to slap him across the face first.
But I nodded.
Then... I really do have to approach this statistically after all.
Inside, I was thinking something else entirely.
As far as I knew... women did not give birth only here.
There were quite a few other hospitals too.
Surely the systems were not all identical...
There has to be at least one person somewhere who dislikes getting things on their hands.
What if I found a place that looked decent and used it as a lesson?
The very foundation of the inductive reasoning you valued so much was statistics.
I’ll destroy you with statistics.
Hm?
“Then shall we go? On the way, I’d like to see some other hospitals too. Would that be possible?”
“Why?”
“Just... for observation?”
“You really are overflowing with passion for learning. I think we can stop by. My father donates funds here and there, after all.”
“Oh.”
“Then shall we?”
“Yes.”
We’re going.
Please, let there be at least one other place.