Chapter 2: The Nineteenth Century [2]
Chapter 2: The Nineteenth Century [2]
“Save me, you sons of bitches!”
“Aren’t we doing this to save you?”
“You lunatics, surgery! Even so, surgery?!”
“That’s why I told you to be careful. Just look at what happened to your leg.”
The patient was practically out of his mind.
Thanks to the man, I had a good seat, so I examined the patient’s wound first.
Normally, if you said you were going to watch a surgery—though the very idea of treating surgery as something to watch was strange enough—there should at least be some distance, should there not?
That seemed like common sense.
But it looked like common sense had been thrown into another galaxy here, because I was seated right in front of it.
What was nineteenth-century medicine like again?
I rummaged through what I had learned as a student, but it was useless.
That one-credit course… was that not the subject neither professors nor students cared about?
I could not remember anything.
So I just looked back at the patient.
This goes beyond cellulitis—a bacterial skin infection. It’s rotting. They’ll have to amputate, won’t they?
From long experience, that was an amputation case.
Having a leg cut off might sound horrifying.
But there was no helping it.
If they did not do that, the patient would die.
What reason could outweigh life itself?
So rather than the patient, I found myself rooting for the people holding him down—rough around the edges, but trying to save him nonetheless.
But as I watched, it felt strange that something normally present in an operating room was nowhere to be seen.
“But aren’t they going to use anesthesia?”
“Anesthesia?”
There was no ventilator, and above all, no anesthesia equipment.
So I asked, and the man looked back at me as if asking what I was talking about.
Ah, right… this man isn’t a doctor.
That was true.
Upton was such a backwater that surgery barely existed there at all.
So maybe he simply did not know what anesthesia was.
“Hm?”
Just then, the man sprang to his feet.
“Come to think of it, this is no time to be sitting around like this.”
“What?”
Both Joseph and I stared blankly.
Before we could stop him, the man strode over to the patient.
Then he handed over three bottles of wine from his bag.
“Drink this.”
“Well now, that’s kind of you…”
“You need to chug it. Otherwise it’ll hurt, you know?”
“Haha, thank you.”
They exchanged words I could not make sense of, and then one of the men roughly restraining the patient took the bottles and began pouring the wine into him.
“You were right to speak up. Thanks to you, Taepyeong, the patient’s getting properly anesthetized.”
“What?”
Wine was the anesthesia?
These lunatics.
Alcohol, you idiots… it lowers blood pressure…
He was already going to bleed, and if his blood pressure dropped, then the patient—
“Oh, look, the doctor is coming. You boys are lucky. He’s the finest physician in London.”
I was about to say something, but the man pointed to one side of the square.
I had thought it strange that only that area was empty.
Then a group of people appeared from that direction as though a prizefighter were making his entrance.
“Who… is the finest physician?”
Judging by appearances alone, they looked less like doctors and more like men who did bad things for a living.
No matter how I looked, I could not tell, so I asked the man.
He laughed heartily again.
“Hahaha! You Upton country boys!”
He seemed to have forgotten, for the moment, that he himself was also from Upton.
Anyway, after laughing, he pointed at one member of the group.
“That gentleman right there is Doctor Robert Liston. If you want to become surgeons too, then he’s the man you should aim for.”
“Ah…”
“Wow.”
That was really the only word for it.
Should I say he had a powerful build?
He looked more suited to being a general than a doctor.
Even in Britain, the average height was still under 170 centimeters at the time, since industrialization had not yet fully delivered its benefits, but that man looked well over 180.
And because he was wearing a black suit instead of a gown, he was genuinely intimidating.
So that’s the finest physician…
What did outward appearance matter?
He was supposedly the finest physician.
I sharpened my gaze, thinking that this would be my chance to properly witness the medicine of this era.
Though, considering they were performing surgery in a wide-open public square with a crowd gathered around, it already seemed doomed.
Even so, I still held onto a sliver of hope.
“Greetings, citizens of London. I am Doctor Liston. Robert Liston. I am also a professor at UCL, University College London Medical School.”
Doctor Liston introduced himself in a booming voice that matched his size.
It felt strange.
Why is he giving that kind of introduction before surgery? It’s not like he’s here to peddle medicine…
Besides, was he not a professor?
If he was a professor, did he really need to advertise himself?
“Ladies and gentlemen, watch today’s surgery carefully and remember my name well. If any of you should ever need surgery, then you will need me!”
Judging by how he acted, he was exactly like a quack peddler.
“Aaaagh! Save me!”
“Then drink more wine if you want to live.”
The patient cried out at the sight of him, but the people around him—whether friends or enemies, I could not tell—just kept forcing more alcohol into his mouth.
The patient, already red-faced from heavy drinking, soon quieted down.
Did he die…?
While I was entertaining a perfectly reasonable suspicion, Liston gestured, and someone who appeared to be a disciple opened a bag.
Liston drew a knife from inside it.
“Look at this blade and its many marks! These are the very proof of my years and experience!”
Crazy bastard.
You son of a bitch.
Hey.
If only I had been a little bigger, I would have run out there cursing.
No, if only I had not been Asian…
No. Don’t. You can’t do that.
Stuck to Liston’s blade were dried blood, grease, and tiny scraps of flesh that presumably belonged to previous patients.
Even if he scrubbed it thoroughly, sterilized it at high heat, and ran it through a disinfecting device, that still would not have been enough. And yet he was going to use a blade so visibly caked in filth?
This was not surgery.
It was execution.
“Uh…”
The moment the patient saw the knife, he started screaming again.
Naturally.
I would have been horrified too.
The alcohol must have worn right off.
“What a coward.”
The man clicked his tongue at the patient with an exasperated look.
No… he isn’t a coward.
That is an entirely rational reaction, sir!
This surgery was already doomed from the moment we were all watching it.
“Hold him.”
After silently staring at the patient, Liston spoke.
Then people who might have been his disciples—or maybe thugs—rushed forward and skillfully pinned the patient to the table.
“Please! Please, have mercy!”
The patient screamed as though he were a condemned man.
But unlike before, it did him no good.
His shoulders, waist, and legs could not move at all; the disciples were simply too strong.
“Cut.”
Doctor Liston’s orders continued.
And the movements of his disciples continued without pause.
Riiip—
When he said cut, I thought they were going to cut the leg immediately, but thankfully that was not it.
They started with the trousers.
Once they were cut away, the lesion that had not been clearly visible until now came into view.
“Ugh.”
The smell was awful too.
The leg absolutely had to come off.
Fine. I get it… so at least disinfect it first.
The knife was already in such a state that I doubted disinfection would matter much.
Still, would it not be better if they reduced at least some of the bacteria on the skin?
That was what I thought.
No, before that… sir, are you not even going to wear gloves…?
At the very least, put on a mask.
Whether he was Doctor Liston or just a bastard, the man stood there with his face bare.
His hands were bare too.
“Tie it.”
No, maybe bare-handed was not quite the right expression when he was holding a knife.
Anyway, at that order, one of his disciples tightly bound the patient’s thigh.
It was a leather strap, and just the act of fastening it looked painful.
“Aaaagh! Bleurgh, bleeeargh!”
Naturally, the patient screamed.
Then, whether because he was breathing too hard or because he had drunk too much, he suddenly vomited to the side.
Some of the vomit splashed onto the leg as well.
“What a waste of good wine.”
And yet the only person who muttered anything was the man beside me.
The surgery showed no sign whatsoever of stopping.
At least… at least wipe off the vomit. Just as a basic matter of decency.
Regardless of my wishes, Liston spoke again.
“Hold him tight.”
And at that exact same moment, a flash of light burst before my eyes.
Thwack!
Liston brought down the knife in his hand at once.
It was not a scalpel the size I used, but a knife that looked to be over thirty centimeters long, so the sunlight pouring into the square flashed wildly across it.
Slash!
At the same time, blood sprayed everywhere.
Even if the strap had been tied on, that did not mean the blood pooled inside had gone anywhere.
Ah—
Even in the middle of that, like a surgeon, I could still follow the change in the wound.
Was he some kind of swordmaster?
One strike.
With a single strike, he severed not only the skin but the muscles as well.
“Aaaaargh!”
Naturally, the patient’s screams did not stop.
But neither Liston nor his disciples paid any attention.
“Saw.”
They simply moved at once to cut through the bone.
“Ugh, aaah!”
With a grating sound, the bone was being cut apart right in front of me.
“Amazing, just as expected of the finest physician! It hasn’t even been thirty seconds yet!”
Watching this horrific scene, a typical London gentleman with a magnificent mustache shouted in admiration.
A glance showed he was holding a watch in his hand.
You lunatic.
What kind of doctor cuts off a leg in under thirty seconds?
Even if Lü Bu were swinging his halberd, it would have taken longer than this.
Grrk—
Fragments of bone flew in all directions.
And at last, the bone came free.
“Suture.”
A great deal of blood had splashed elsewhere too, but most of it had landed on Doctor Liston’s face.
He looked less like a doctor than a demon.
Even so, Liston calmly held out his hand, and a disciple passed him a thread and needle that he had been fiddling with bare-handed.
Liston began stitching up the blood vessels jutting out with that thread and needle.
Can he survive this?
No.
He was going to die.
That was not surgery.
It was an insult to surgery.
Infection… he’ll die of infection… no, maybe he’s already dead?
I cautiously looked at the patient’s face.
The man who had been screaming in agony just moments ago was now silent.
Most likely, he had either fainted from the pain or died of shock brought on by it.
Considering how much alcohol they had forced into him, that was only natural.
“Ah…”
When it truly sank in that the one who had done this was, of all people, a doctor, I felt dizzy.
It was like the world was going black before my eyes.
I thought I was seeing the sky instead of the operating table, and then I heard the man’s voice by my ear.
“If you can’t even watch something like this, how are you supposed to become a surgeon?”
No.
That is not it.
That is not why I fainted.
This… this is not surgery…
I’ll change it all. You bunch of barbarians…
That day, I too began dreaming of becoming a surgeon.
It was for a somewhat different reason than Joseph, who babbled so innocently, “I want to become like him too.”