This Peculiar Poison
"What on earth do you think you are doing?!"
The police in this era... Calling them "police" was frankly generous. They were little more than licensed ruffians.
When you traced their lineage, town guards and watchmen had been cut from the exact same cloth since the Middle Ages. Given the meager pittance they received from feudal lords, shaking down the common folk had always been their true trade and primary source of pocket money. While modern law enforcement had not inherited every single vice of that tradition, enough of the legacy lingered that they were remarkably desensitized to heinous, gruesome spectacles. A high-ranking officer like this one, who had seen, heard, and weathered all manner of horrors in his career, should have been thoroughly unflappable.
Yet here he was, staring in sheer, unadulterated shock. To be fair, the spectacle before him warranted it.
"We need to ascertain what the man ate!" Liston barked.
"Then why the knife?! And why are you stripping his clothes...?!"
"Haha! Good heavens, man. You have Pyeong to blame for this."
"Pyeong...? Dr. Pyeong harbors such tastes?"
The officer, wide-eyed as a startled hare, spun around to glower at me.
A wave of indignant outrage washed over me. What did I do? When on earth did I ever suggest this?
"Didn't you say so yourself back then?" Liston boomed, gesticulating wildly. "While carving open that belly and slicing through the stomach—'Ah, this corpse seems to have dined on jellied eels before kicking the bucket!'"
"Ah."
Right. So I did.
I really did say that, didn't I?
Still, that had been spoken in the purest spirit of academic inquiry! It had looked nothing like this maniacal, butcher-shop display he was putting on right now.
"Therefore," Liston declared, puffing out his chest, "if we are to discover what this unfortunate fellow ingested prior to his demise..."
"Aha... then one simply needs to slit his belly and crack open the stomach, is that it?"
"Precisely."
"Well, get on with it then! Don't let me keep you."
Having grasped the logic, the officer ceased all protest and began actively egging us on to gut the cadaver. Consent from the bereaved family? Not a chance in hell. Most likely, they took one look at his nationality and shrugged: The bloke's a Frenchman. He'll be lucky if they don't dump his carcass in a ditch.
Even attempting to repatriate his remains across the Channel would have been a nightmare. How could they possibly embalm him? However wealthy Sir Jamie might be, and however much thought he spared, the corpse would inevitably rot into putrid soup during the damp voyage across the sea and the bumpy journey by carriage. Strictly between us, I had heard whispers that in such cases, people occasionally just shoved any random cadaver into the pine box and shipped it off instead.
"Hold on a moment, let me don my gloves," Liston muttered.
"Gloves? What on earth for?" the officer asked.
"Haha... Such appalling ignorance! A corpse exudes noxious miasma, my good sir."
"Miasma, you say?"
"Haven't constables occasionally dropped dead after handling rotting corpses? That was entirely due to this evil vapor."
"Good heavens! Then what is one to do?!"
Our magnificent Liston pulled on a pair of rubber gloves before brandishing his blade over the abdomen. Meanwhile, I snapped on my own gloves and stepped up to the table. Dissecting a corpse right in the middle of a hotel room was hardly my idea of an agreeable afternoon, but if everyone present was on board, who was I to complain? Besides, this infernal arsenic business had to be brought to light somehow. Everyone kept insisting the green pigment was harmless, but my modern medical instincts screamed otherwise.
That was precisely why I had tied on a cloth mask as well. Whether a flimsy strip of fabric could filter out toxic airborne particles was doubtful, but still... Psychological quarantine. It's mental protection, pure and simple. Chanting it like a protective mantra made me feel marginally safer.
"Donning gloves generally keeps the evil vapors at bay," Liston explained.
"Gloves such as those?"
"Indeed. Leather gloves may actually cause the miasma to fester and breed within the hide. Vulcanized rubber gloves are the undisputed champions."
"Where might one procure such items...?"
"Fret not. You can purchase them right from us."
"Aha!"
Having managed a brazen sales pitch in the middle of a death inquiry, Liston drove a mid-sized blade straight into the belly and drew it downward.
Squelch.
Then, abruptly, he paused and glanced over at me. I blinked in bewilderment. Ripping through flesh with reckless abandon was the very essence of Robert Liston.
"What is it, sir?"
"Do I not need to disinfect the site?"
"He's already dead, why on earth would you disinfect him?"
"Ah. Quite right."
It was his newfound hygiene obsession. Tears of emotion practically welled in my eyes; my chest swelled with profound pride. How many grueling, lonely battles had I fought just to hardwire this single concept into his stubborn Victorian skull?
"Now then, let's see..." Liston muttered.
"Here it is," I said, locating the organ.
"Good lad. Haul it out."
"Right."
I carefully hoisted the stomach, which was already beginning its slow descent into decomposition. Without a moment's hesitation, Liston slit the muscular pouch wide open. A foul slurry of stomach contents spilled out.
Had this been Korean food—or rather, any form of civilized cuisine—the chyme would have broken down beyond recognition. But British food was in a league of its own. I had no idea how they prepared their meals, but their cooking was nearly impossible to chew, miserable to digest, and utterly devoid of flavor. Every chef in this blasted empire deserved to have their heads mounted on pikes.
"What was the dinner menu again?" Liston asked, poking through the mess.
"Ah... mutton steak," the officer replied.
"Found it. And this? What in God's name is this green clump?"
"Ah... cucumber."
"Cucumber it is."
Upon a thorough examination of the stomach, duodenum, and small intestine, we established that the poor victim's final supper had consisted of leathery roasted mutton steak, a fish dish accompanied by cucumbers, eel pudding, and sardine pie.
The man was French... To cross the Channel to make a fortune in Britain, only to suffer such an ignominious end. He couldn't have derived a shred of joy from that dreadful meal. Watching his English hosts shovel down that culinary catastrophe with relish must have left him utterly speechless. And as if choking down that horror wasn't punishment enough, he had died. And how? Mid-vomit.
"Everyone ate the exact same food, yet only he perished," Liston remarked, rubbing his chin.
"Could it not simply be natural causes?" the officer suggested.
"One rarely vomits oneself into the grave from mere natural causes."
"Mmm..."
I cleared my throat and carefully cut into their deliberation. Considering one party was Robert Liston and the other a senior police official, the fact that an Asian doctor could chime in freely was already an astonishing mark of success.
"Pardon me for a moment."
"Ah, speak your mind, lad."
"Yes, Dr. Pyeong. I have heard great tales of your supernatural discernment."
The officer's reasoning sounded somewhat dubious, but regardless, I laid out my deductions.
"When a person suffers from arsenic poisoning, they exhibit violent vomiting, profuse diarrhea... and severe perspiration."
"Are those symptoms of poisoning?" the officer countered. "Surely that is merely the body purging the ailment during recovery."
"Indeed, Pyeong," Liston chimed in. "You're stretching it a bit far there."
God damn it. What kind of medieval drivel is this now?
"V-Very well. Let us set the word 'poisoning' aside for a moment. In any case, ingesting arsenic induces violent vomiting, does it not?"
"It does," Liston agreed.
"And this victim vomited profusely. Would it not be entirely reasonable to attribute it to arsenic? This wallpaper—you said yourself that it was painted with arsenic pigment."
"Hmm. Now that you mention it..." The officer tapped his cheek. "Did the fellow go about licking the walls?"
Just when I thought we were making headway, the conversation took a sharp turn into absurdity. Why the bloody hell would he lick the walls?! Is he some kind of pervert? No, wait. He was French... so who knows, maybe he did.
"Even without licking them, could the powder not drift into the air?" I asked. As a proud twenty-first-century physician who refrained from slandering innocent victims, I offered a far more rational hypothesis.
"Powder, you say? Arsenic dust? Hmm..." The officer frowned thoughtfully. "It is not entirely impossible, but... this pigment has been all the rage in France for quite some time now. You mentioned a few months, but that refers to when the trend exploded into the general public; high society has used it far longer. If powder truly drifted about, shouldn't everyone in France be dropping dead?"
"Would it not be wise to keep our minds open to the possibility?" I urged. "As we discovered through our work with anesthesia, the exact same substance produces slightly different reactions depending on the individual."
"Is that so?"
Liston came to my aid. "Indeed. Every man responds differently. A truly remarkable phenomenon."
In truth, it simply came down to physical stature and hepatic metabolic clearance determining the required dosage, but for now, I left that cloaked in the veil of the occult. Explaining pharmacokinetic mechanisms would only inflate my mystic reputation to disastrous heights. People were already running around whispering about my "divine powers" and supernatural discernment. If I pushed it any further, what would happen? I'd either end up burned at the stake as a charlatan or forced onto a throne as a cult leader.
"I see. So your contention is that this man was exceptionally susceptible to arsenic?"
"Precisely."
"Well... very well. You have been of great assistance. Knowing the contents of his stomach will certainly advance our investigation. My thanks."
"Think nothing of it!" Liston beamed. "If you have any condemned criminals, do send them our way again."
"Aye, aye. I shall not forget."
After exchanging bizarrely cordial pleasantries, we took our leave. Yet we didn't simply amble back empty-handed.
"Hyung."
"Aye?"
"I have a terribly bad feeling about this arsenic."
"Is that so? To tell the truth, I felt a queer sensation back there myself. Standing in that chamber, my head felt rather light."
"Really? You felt it too? I assumed my stomach was just turning from slicing into a putrefying gut."
"Ah. Could it have been that...?"
"At any rate! We need to investigate this arsenic more thoroughly. In truth, it is an outright poison."
"Well... aye. It serves that purpose on occasion," Liston conceded. "Yet it is also widely administered as medicine."
Medicine, my ass. Salvarsan hasn't even been synthesized yet, you madmen! The urge to scream rose in my throat, but I bit my tongue. Heh. Looking into Liston's earnest face always had a way of improving my patience.
"Th-That's why I'm saying there might be a grave misunderstanding involved, and we ought to scrutinize it closely."
"A misunderstanding... I see."
"Yes. A misunderstanding. Didn't we prove that the traditional doctrine regarding miasma was utterly baseless? Granted, most practitioners still refuse to accept it, but..."
"Aye, you're right! Come to think of it, you have a point. Then where ought we begin our inquiry...?"
"Well... medical texts, perhaps?"
Research always began with books. It was standard procedure. Liston, however, marched to the beat of his own drum.
"Cast off that pedantic, bookish mindset!" he snapped. "You just proclaimed we must break free from traditional dogma, yet your first instinct is to bury your nose in archaic volumes filled with outdated nonsense?"
"Well..."
A scholar claiming one shouldn't consult books... Strangely enough, it sounded oddly compelling. It almost made sense!
"Then what do you propose we do?"
"Driver!" Liston bellowed out the carriage window.
"Yes, sir!"
"Take us to the apothecary!"
"Ah... right away, sir."
And with that, our carriage rattled off toward the apothecary shop.
The apothecary... One of the supreme roots of all evil in this century. That was where they peddled laudanum over the counter. Then again, in an era where physicians possessed virtually nothing else of clinical efficacy, it was hard to hold it against them.
"Inside we go," Liston ordered.
"Ah, yes, sir."
And so, we barged through the door. I had no earthly idea why we were even here; I had merely followed because he told me to follow.
"Bring out the proprietor!" Liston roared.
The second the words left his mouth, the reality dawned on me. We're sticking the place up.
"P-Pardon? Who...?"
"Do you carry medicines concocted from arsenic? Bring out every last bottle!"
"What? I say, what madness is this... Who on earth are—"
"Does my identity matter in the slightest?" Liston growled, stepping into the lamplight.
"N-No, sir! Not at all, sir!"
Having caught a good look at Liston's towering frame and terrifying scowl, the apothecary scrambled into the back and promptly reemerged clutching an assortment of glass vials.
"Th-This is our principal formulation, sir."
"Fowler's Solution? What in heaven's name is that?"
"Our greatest seller! When ingested, it induces diarrhea and vomiting, along with heavy sweats... and after a brief bout of convulsions, the fever subsides completely."
Diarrhea, vomiting, perspiration, followed by violent convulsions... Is that fever breaking, or is the bloody patient cooling down in rigor mortis?! In plain terms: the poor bastard was dying! And they sold this deadly concoction in broad daylight across the counter? In the nineteenth century, an era that supposedly prided itself on the march of science!
"A potent physic indeed, if it drives down fevers so thoroughly," Liston remarked in genuine admiration.
"Quite so, sir."
"I shall have to conduct a proper inquiry into this mixture."
"Uh-huh."
"What?" Liston turned to me.
"Nothing. Best of luck with your research, sir."
Stuffing the phials into his coat, Liston climbed back into the coach. Then he yelled out to the coachman once more.
"Driver!"
"Yes, sir!"
"To the wallpaper merchant next!"
"Ah... right away, sir."
I lacked the ability to read the coachman's thoughts, but... I suspected he was silently praying for the soul of the wallpaper shop owner. Just as I was.
"Bring out the proprietor!"
"Hand over all of this!"
"Right then, let us away! Next stop, the draper's shop!"
The trouble was, with every passing hour, the number of souls requiring my silent prayers was multiplying exponentially.