Chapter 20: What Have You People Even Been Doing? [2]
Chapter 20: What Have You People Even Been Doing? [2]
Did the professor really say that?
Did he really talk about air and all that?
I think he did...
Until yesterday, I had definitely still doubted it.
Come on, no way he’d really say that. Right?
He was a professor.
It was already the nineteenth century.
An era that already knew oxygen existed.
He definitely did.
One hundred percent... those fucking bastards.
But after listening to the lectures, I was sure.
I thought back on the lecture given by that professor bastard who had just left the classroom looking so absurdly proud of himself.
He’s still talking about bodily humors as the cause of disease...
The theory of the four humors.
Surely people had heard of it.
Not just doctors, even ordinary people would have.
Why?
Because it was Hippocrates who proposed it.
In the fifth century BCE.
You fucking bastards. You still haven’t overturned something from more than two thousand years ago?
Pain came from having too much blood, so you had to let blood out?
Old blood had to be drained...?
Then why did the spleen even exist?
Why did hematopoiesis exist?
Our bodies naturally destroyed and discarded old blood... old blood cells...
“Why are you muttering to yourself again? We have practicum.”
“Yeah, hurry up. We can’t keep Senior waiting.”
I was already angry enough to die, and now there was practicum again...
Heh.
A hollow laugh slipped out.
Maybe it would have been one thing if it were some other practicum, but wasn’t it obstetrics and gynecology again?
What kind of horror was waiting for me today?
No. No. This is the medical college I chose... I have to endure it through grit and sheer stubbornness.
I had to know how people were being killed so that I could prevent it later, did I not?
Since it was an era of total catastrophe, I decided to charge straight into it.
And at the same time, gather some statistics.
No matter what else they were, these people were at least trying to imitate scientists.
The problem was that it was all pretense, but I still had to make use of it somehow.
Hmm.
Even though I had steeled myself, the ward was not easy to deal with.
First of all... there were too many people.
They had to expand the rooms.
Thirty or forty people in one room was too many.
They needed to add more floors to the building or do something, because this was...
“Now then, who wants to try a Pelvic Exam?”
On top of that, neither the professor nor the students still washed their hands.
To think there had once been an era when medical staff took not washing their hands for granted.
And in a time without antibiotics, no less...
I had been shocked before, but even seeing it again today, it still felt newly shocking.
If there was one improvement, it was that I did not faint.
I really shouldn’t get used to this.
I was still thinking that inside, but anyway, I was enduring it.
Hmm.
No, I take that back.
As expected, I could not keep watching.
So I stepped outside and asked the nurses, “Do any of you happen to know how many Puerperal Fever cases occurred in this ward last month?”
“Hmm...”
Oh, she was actually thinking about it.
Surprising, but not really surprising.
The nurses of this era were not properly educated.
Were doctors any different?
The education I was receiving right now was far too much of a mess to call education.
And expecting statistics from someone who had received even less than that was asking too much...
“I know.”
Just as I was thinking that, someone stepped forward.
It was a child.
Not childlike-looking, but genuinely a child.
She looked younger than me.
“What do you mean, you know?”
“Professor Blundell had me organize it all.”
“Ah... Professor Blundell...”
Before speaking further, I noticed her appearance first.
In truth, I could say I had been extraordinarily lucky.
I was Joseon-born, yet here I was living like a noble in Britain at this time.
Not that I was actually a noble, but still, I had never gone hungry.
Nor had I ever really had an uncomfortable place to sleep.
Wow...
Compared to that, the small girl standing before me looked pitifully shabby.
Even if I set aside the fact that nursing uniforms in this era amounted to little more than a white, or once-white, apron, her rough hair, swollen lips, and chapped hands all made her look like hardship itself.
Still... for London, this probably counts as decent enough...
I had never really gone deep into the slums.
But among the people who occasionally came and went from the Anatomy Room, many had ties there.
Judging from their appearance and the way they talked, it was truly... a wreck.
“Here. Here it is.”
While I was distracted for a moment, the young nurse showed me a sheet of paper.
On it were the total number of patients and the number who had died.
“Is there... no recorded diagnosis of the cause?”
“Huh? Ah... what they died of, you mean?”
“Yes. It doesn’t seem to be written here.”
“No. There weren’t separate instructions for that.”
Hmm.
It would help, but it did not seem like it would be decisive help.
Because they had lumped together everyone who died without recording the cause.
“Hmm...?”
No.
That was not right.
It did seem like it would help.
The mortality rate was too high.
“Does this mean... one or two out of every ten are dying?”
“Ah, yes. Once I started writing it down, that’s what it looked like. It hasn’t been that long since I began keeping track, but I suppose it must have been like this all along.”
The ward mortality rate was well over fifteen percent.
If this had been an intensive care unit, then yes... that might have been understandable.
But this was not that kind of place.
It was an obstetrics ward.
Not a ward collecting only patients with abnormal prenatal findings, but one where the overwhelming majority were ordinary pregnant women.
And she’s saying that so brightly...?
It had to be called horrifying.
Even from the brief glance I had taken earlier, it had felt more like a killing factory than a hospital.
But now that the numbers made it undeniable, it really was a killing factory.
“This includes patients who were discharged and died later too, right?”
“Huh? Ah, no. We don’t have that kind of capacity. And if they could afford house calls, they wouldn’t have come here in the first place.”
“Ah.”
I had asked that hoping this might at least be the worst-case figure, but the answer, no, the despair, came back immediately.
What kind of criteria did they use for sending patients home?
Probably not much.
How did I know?
Because these bastards sent people home right after cutting off a leg.
“Hmm... do midwives also come to this ward?”
“Huh? Ah, yes. Of course. The professor and the doctors can’t possibly see everyone.”
Don’t say that with a regretful face...
The midwives were likely far better.
I barely kept that from coming out and instead asked, “Could I meet them now?”
“Huh? The midwives?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm...”
“Why?”
“No, it’s just that this is the first time I’ve seen a doctor ask for something like that.”
I wasn’t a doctor, I was a medical student...
But that distinction probably meant nothing here.
It was an era without much separation there.
Authority and class were divided with razor precision, but from the patient’s point of view, who could tell whether someone was a doctor or a medical student?
“It wouldn’t be rude, would it?”
“Ah, no. Of course not. I’ll go find one for you.”
Anyway, the nurse’s words were shocking.
I did not know the history of the midwifery profession in detail, but surely it was older than the history of obstetrics and gynecology.
Which meant they were my seniors in a field boasting long history and tradition... and yet these people had never once gone to ask them for guidance.
In the twenty-first century... fine, by then all that knowledge had long since been absorbed into obstetrics. But judging by what you people are doing...
It would not have been an exaggeration to say that obstetrics in the twenty-first century had practically brought maternal mortality down to zero.
Inside the field, they likely still recognized ongoing problems.
But academically, it felt nearly complete.
But right now...
it felt like I did not even know where to begin.
“Ah... what is this about?”
“He’s a medical student and said he’d like to meet you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm...”
Anyway, I trailed along behind the nurse.
Whether she was simply sociable or something else, she spoke easily even to a midwife much older than herself.
The midwife, meanwhile, looked rather displeased.
I could not tell whether that was because of me or because of the nurse.
“A medical student...?”
Ah, it seemed it was because of me.
She was staring at me openly.
Joseph...
For a moment I almost felt like I needed to learn summoning magic.
“Ah, Doctor Pyeong here... is a Joseon nobleman who has come to study Britain’s culture. He’s also a Christian. Ha ha.”
Huh?
Had I learned it?
Did I gain a passive skill when I was reborn?
“Why did you run off on your own all of a sudden?”
“I thought you were going off on a date.”
Apparently not.
Alfred was grinning slyly at the nurse.
Lunatic.
I might look young, but in my previous life I’d been over thirty.
Not that I had any intention of never dating or anything like that.
Still, I wasn’t dating a kid.
She was a child.
This was a scene of labor exploitation.
“Anyway... he’s not a suspicious person. He’s someone important.”
Alfred turned his gaze from the nurse to the midwife.
He pointed at me, and in his hand I could see the thread I had used to stitch him up yesterday.
Fortunately, it looked only slightly swollen, with no sign of infection.
I saved you, you know.
Maybe that was his way of repaying me.
Anyway, he defended me with surprising vigor.
The effect was tremendous.
“Ah... well, if Young Master says so.”
I only thought of him as a fool because I kept viewing him that way, but objectively, he really was someone with influence here.
In a way, it might even have been an honor that someone like him was treating me this way.
“Now then, speak, Junior.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“No need for thanks between us.”
After expressing my thanks, I asked the midwife, “You do house calls too, right? I mean... home visits.”
“Huh? Ah, yes. I do.”
“How many did you make last month?”
“About ten?”
“And among them, how many died?”
“What rotten luck, asking that...”
“It’s an important question. Please answer.”
“Not one. I’ve been doing this work for quite a while.”
She answered with a proud expression.
And I could understand why.
The number was a bit small, but still...
Anyway, they had all lived, had they not?
“What about the month before last?”
“I don’t remember every detail, but no one died then either.”
And those numbers repeated month after month.
Which meant there was a clear statistical difference.
“Then... could all of you write down how many house calls you made last month and how many patients died?”
“No, what for?”
But to prove it more clearly, I needed data.
As always, creating data took labor.
Either my labor or someone else’s.
Naturally, the response was negative.
If I had really been some teenage brat, I might have been flustered.
But in my previous life, I had been a professor.
Which meant I also knew a thing or two about getting people to work.
“Senior. Do you have money?”
“Huh?”
“If you do, hand some over. We’ll give it to them as a little fee for their trouble.”
“No, why am I the one...”
“Let’s contribute to the advancement of medicine.”
Was there really anything money couldn’t do?
I’d heard there was, somewhere, but I hadn’t seen it yet.