Chapter 199: What Was to Come Had Come… [3]
“Ugh.”
“Ugh!”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s so scary.”
“Who, me?”
“Yes.”
“Ah…”
We stood in silence for a while. But then I noticed the patients’ expressions darken even further. Come to think of it, wasn’t staring considered rude in some cultures?
“Pyeong.”
“Yes?”
“Put down the knife first.”
“Huh? Oh! Right. What’s this doing here?”
“What do you mean, ‘what’? You’re waving your new scalpel around like it’s a toy.”
“Ah…”
Yeah. Standing over two horrified patients while casually holding a scalpel had probably crossed a line. That said, the knife was excellent. Sharp, balanced, and well forged. German steel, they said. It even looked like it at a glance.
I used to freeze up when I held steel like this…
Now I understood why steel was the backbone of industry. Had anyone ever had a scalpel break mid-surgery? Probably not in the twenty-first century, unless they were reckless enough to scrape bone with it. Still, I remembered once when I merely brushed through a muscle layer and the thing snapped.
“You can’t use it like that. It’s too thin,” someone had said.
I still remembered Liston sitting down, stomach churning, as I scrambled on the floor looking for the broken fragments. Blundell had only scoffed.
“What are you doing? Just close it up,” he had said, dismissively.
It was ridiculous. No understanding at all of how foreign substances could cause inflammation. We were lucky even to have the half-baked theory of “miasma” floating around.
Still, I was proud of the scalpel in my hand now. It was a gift from Germany, sent by Gauss, Sophie Germain’s friend. They had even included mathematical notes. Supposedly, it could withstand moderate impact without snapping. It seemed plausible.
Anyway, tool or not, this was not the time for surgery.
“It’s not possible to operate right now.”
Leaving the patients for a moment, I turned to Liston. He had a strange look on his face, somewhere between curiosity and disappointment.
“Why not?”
That innocent curiosity could be more unsettling than cruelty. I could see it in his eyes.
Why not just cut?
The advent of anesthesia had been monumental. Surgical techniques were advancing rapidly across Europe and the United States. The concept of disinfection was just starting to take root. Liston, for his part, had become one of the more daring abdominal surgeons.
But technology evolves faster than thinking does.
And that gap? That was where the real danger lived.
Don’t get angry. Don’t be mad at Liston. He doesn’t know better yet.
Even this face… You got used to it. There was hope in that.
“You said you’ve done jaw resections before?”
“Yes. A few times. Four, maybe?”
“How many of them survived?”
“Hmm…”
So much for hope.
“You don’t know?”
I asked anyway. Maybe it was unfair to assume.
“I really don’t. But I ran into one of them once, just by chance. She was still alive.”
“Really? How was she doing?”
“…Not great, obviously.”
Doctors in this era were often good at one thing: surgery. And then disappearing. I mean, we literally taught horseback riding in medical school so doctors could run away when things went south. Of course, horses were expensive, so only a few students could afford it. That was why I had not seen Joseph, Alfred, or Colin recently. They were off at the riding range.
It was like we were training them to be killers in advance.
“I’ll have to round up those kids and have a word with them…”
“How did that surviving patient look?”
“I could draw it.”
“Hmm.”
“She looked something like this…”
“And she was still alive?”
“Barely. She was begging on the street. But she lasted quite a while.”
From what Liston said, it was clear that jawbone resections were a mess. Not that I had expected anything else.
“Can you bring her here?”
“Bring her? That’s a hassle…”
“Shouldn’t we refine the technique? This isn’t like operating without anesthesia anymore.”
“Ah. Right. We do have that now…”
Liston had probably planned to pin the patient down and swing the knife, same as always. Even with anesthesia available, doctors often ignored it if they thought the patient could endure. Fortunately, Liston was open-minded enough to go find the woman.
While he was gone, I went to the dissection lab.
Oh…
No maggots. No rats. Well, maybe some, but at least they were not out in the open anymore. Liston, obsessed with hygiene, had turned the place upside down. Sure, the scrubbed floor still had some stubborn stains, but it was a huge improvement.
I whistled softly, pleased by the atmosphere.
I stood before the cadaver. I had managed to replicate something like formalin, but it did not preserve bodies long-term. Teaching anatomical structure was fine. But trying to invent surgical techniques? That was another matter.
Crap… they’re watching me.
Behind me, there were whispers.
“He’s scarier than Liston. Don’t look him in the eye.”
“I heard he crushed the French with poop.”
Seriously? That was not how that went. I had gone to save a city crushed by its own waste, not add to it.
Anyway, we’ll clear from here… to here.
Using a brush, I drew dotted lines across the cadaver’s face. Thankfully, the patients I had seen earlier might still have intact joints. From the center to the right side, the structure seemed salvageable.
Even if the internal bone is gone, preserving the full shape is out of the question. And bone grafting? Forget it.
That was a twenty-first-century luxury. Even with disinfection, the infection risk was high. We did not have heparin, so clotting was a major problem. Harvesting flesh from another site was dangerous. So what was left?
Reroute.
Improvise.
“I brought her.”
Liston shoved the confused woman in front of me. She looked terrified.
“A-a dissection lab?!”
Well, no surprise there. Half the doctors in this century were either conducting, or willing to conduct, invasive and inhumane experiments. And this was the dissection room. No average person could stay calm in a room full of corpses.
“Oh, it’s not like that. Don’t worry. Just open your mouth for a moment.”
“Ugh…”
“Go on, just try it.”
“Oh my God.”
“It’s fine. If anything goes wrong, you could die.”
“Aah…”
I had no idea how I had become this kind of figure.
But I gently pressed the handle of the scalpel down on her tongue, not the blade. With my other hand, I held up a gas lamp to inspect her mouth.
It’s empty. No wonder she’s so thin. Even if she had food, she couldn’t have eaten it.
In the modern era, she would be on a liquid diet, nutrients in fluid form. But here? Nothing like that existed. That should never have been allowed to happen.
“Yeah… I’ll need to redirect the muscle.”
“Redirect what? Earlier you said you were going to rotate something in the patient’s mouth. What are you rotating?”
“She has to live like this.”
“Like this?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm… Will it work?”
Just filling the void did not mean she would be able to chew. If we could chew with flesh alone, we would not have evolved teeth. But if I could anchor some muscle tissue, maybe she could handle soft foods. Chewy things? Maybe not. But she could survive. Pudding… eel pudding, perhaps.
“Ah, freezing…”
“The patient…”
I was not optimistic. Her chances of survival were slim.
“Here, take this and buy some soup.”
“Ah… amaham!”
She could not enunciate clearly. Obviously, with her jaw like that. But I gave her money. A lot of it. Enough to get by for a month if she managed it well.
“Why are you giving her so much?”
“It’s sad. She just shaved and ended up like this…”
“Well, accidents happen in life. Still, why shave? It’s dangerous.”
I gave her the money out of pity, but the others did not seem to understand. Instead, they blamed her. And honestly, they were not wrong. Why would you shave in an era where wounds could easily turn fatal? Especially with rusty blades?
“Let me show you what this surgery will look like.”
“You’re going to cut the cadaver’s jaw?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s gather everyone. If this is really tied to white phosphorus… it’s serious. This could stir up a storm in London.”
“That would be ideal. Let’s do it.”
Could I really show them? Maybe not. But even if they did not understand, it could raise awareness. Or maybe I was the only one who could do this.
Still… there’s no harm in building a reputation.
That might sound arrogant, but I was not doing it for vanity. I needed influence to change this world.
Soon, I was surrounded by doctors and students. Not all of them looked pleased. Understandably so. I had disrupted their lectures, challenged their theories, and told them to disinfect everything. If Liston were not beside me, I would probably already have been stabbed.
But not everyone hates me.
Time to focus on those who did not.
I brought out the saw. A knife would not cut bone. As soon as I placed it on the cadaver’s jaw, the murmuring began.
“Is this surgery… even ethical?”
“Who would do something so brutal?”
Funny, coming from people who had done far worse.
I laughed in disbelief.