Chapter 21: What Have You People Even Been Doing? [3]
Chapter 21: What Have You People Even Been Doing? [3]
The senior had quite a bit of money.
Maybe it was because he really was the young master of a wealthy family, but at the very least, he had enough money to let us complete the survey.
“No……”
“You’re making a great contribution to the advancement of medicine.”
“What contribution…… This is money I brought to have a new set of clothes made……”
“The clothes you have on now are fine, though?”
“No…… Party season is coming up soon……. Never mind Father, I want to date……”
“Tut. A future doctor talking about dating. Ridiculous.”
He could not bring himself to hand it over readily. Just look at those eyes. He was clinging to it so hard.
This bastard.
It was only because I kept my mouth shut, but still, I was the one who had saved his life.
“Here.”
“Oh, good.”
“Here.”
“Yes, yes.”
There was always a reason for staying quiet. No matter how good a deed was, if you kept bringing it up over and over, its value wore down even when you had not actually gotten anything back in return.
How did I know?
If you spent enough time getting ground down under professors, you naturally learned.
I worked so hard teaching you, and you still can’t do even this!
Yes, I can’t.
It was not quite that bad, but still. How many times had I really heard things like that…….
“Here.”
“Ah, yes, yes.”
Anyway, while I kept my mouth shut, the midwives each wrote down the circumstances they had experienced over the past few months. As the stack of papers grew thicker and thicker, my heart grew warm and full.
Why?
Because even at a glance, the difference was obvious. And it was not a slight difference, either.
The statistics that our professor Bloodborne or Blundell or whatever his name was had written down differed from the statistics they recorded by nearly tenfold at the very least.
Do you wash your hands?
I do.
They had answered like that as well. At least when they made house calls, they apparently did wash their hands. It was a bit disappointing that the reason was simply custom. Still, it was something to be thankful for.
At any rate, they did wash them.
That was why I could now see this stark difference with my own eyes.
“Good. Senior, Joseph. Come here.”
Like all surveys, it did not take very long. In less than ten minutes, it was all over.
Analysis?
That took even less time than that.
Naturally.
I already had an expected result in mind, and this result was no different from it.
“Take a good look, Senior. This is our…… obstetrics professor. What was his name again?”
“Professor Blundell. Damn, he’s a scary man.”
“Ah, right. Professor Blundell.”
This was not exactly the time to say it, but still, no matter how many times I heard foreign names, they just never stuck in my head at once. Blundell. What kind of name was Blundell, anyway? Compared to that, names like Joseph and Alfred were very honest names.
Anyway, this was not the time to critique names, so I nodded and flipped through the papers.
“Look here. Look at the rate at which mothers die in our hospital.”
“Hmm…… one or two out of ten die.”
“Exactly. That’s quite a lot.”
So it was possible to wear that expression while saying that one or two out of ten died.
These lunatics.
Could you say that in front of your own mother? Could you say someone had given birth the way people spun a chamber in Russian roulette?
Though…… these two came from wealthy families…… they were probably born at home. Same with me.
Mother, thank you.
Suddenly, I missed my mother.
“Don’t you think it’s not just quite a lot, but far too many?”
“Hm? Before medicine advanced, even more must have died, right?”
“Exactly. Haven’t you heard that survival rates improved after forceps were invented?”
But this was no time to cry because I missed my mother, so I tried to explain it as rationally as possible. What came back, however, was an absurd opinion.
No, was it actually true?
Could it be that before this, even more people had died?
No…… that makes no sense…….
Certainly, because humans were the kind of species with such large heads, maternal mortality being higher than in other animals was true enough…… But even so, if more than one or two out of ten were dying, then who in the world would get pregnant?
Even from a man’s point of view, it was the same. Losing your wife with a one-in-three probability? If you had two children, the chance your wife would still be alive afterward would not even be half.
“Let’s think in absolute numbers. Absolutely.”
But what argument would work on men steeped in modern medicine, or rather, what counted as modern medicine from their point of view?
Even I had once thought I was the best when I was a resident. Because I knew things only half-baked, it was even worse. I often thought that the things I did not know were simply things not worth knowing.
Yes, I should be understanding, coming from the perspective of a much younger junior.
“In absolute terms…… it isn’t exactly low.”
“Exactly. Mm.”
“But look. It’s different when midwives deliver babies at home.”
I pointed to the papers, hoping they would be shocked. There, using twenty-first-century math, I had written the calculated average.
21% versus 1.8%.
If you saw that and still felt nothing, then you were cold-blooded. Or the kind of bastard who deliberately went around killing people.
“Oh, I wondered what it was.”
“Haha. This is common sense, Pyeong-ah.”
But they laughed.
I wanted them to feel alarmed, and they laughed?
If I had a hammer, I really would have wanted to smash each of them over the head once or twice.
“The air is different.”
“Right. London is kind of…… like that to begin with, isn’t it? Go outside and look around once in a while, Pyeong-ah. It’s gloomy.”
As I trembled with anger, the two of them kept talking, determined not to lose out.
“Or maybe a water vein? Hm? The water might be bad.”
“Ah, I heard that too. Pyeong-ah, what were you even doing in class last time? Why aren’t you studying?”
As you could see, it was all utter nonsense.
The air? Water veins?
Hah.
“You don’t even know miasma?”
“Ah…….”
Then, at last, they started looking at me like they had seen something pitiful beyond words. What made me slightly uneasy was that they had brought up something I genuinely did not know.
Miasma?
What the hell was that……?
“I guess he really doesn’t know? Is it because he’s Korean?”
“Ah…… Even among people in our country, the ones who don’t study probably wouldn’t know either.”
“So he really hasn’t studied.”
“Exactly. A medical student…….”
The two of them kept looking at me with contempt. Meanwhile, I was rummaging through old memories.
Had I learned it in physiology?
I did not know what miasma was, but it could not be a clinical term. If it had been, there was no way I would have completely forgotten it. Ever since I learned to read, what I did every single day was write books so I would not forget things…….
“I thought you obviously knew. Come to think of it, in the dissection room…… they say infection can arise because of substances like that. It smells foul there too.”
But as the conversation continued, I realized there was some fundamental mismatch between us.
Bad smell?
This was giving me a bad feeling.
“They call the air in such places miasma.”
“Mm.”
“That is the root of all disease. Hospitals can’t help it. Since sick people gather here…… the air in this place is swarming with miasma. We’re making a kind of sacrifice, in a way. That’s probably why so many seniors die young too.”
Whatever I was thinking, my senior had a truly enraptured expression on his face. He looked intoxicated with himself.
Doctor high.
Yes, the doctor high could hit pretty hard. The smell of the night air after saving someone’s life was enough to intoxicate a person.
But did you really think you had the right to feel that?
Now I remember. Miasma. It was one of the things written in the exam notes.
To state the conclusion first, it was indeed a word that remained somewhere in my distant memory. It was also a test term. And when did it usually appear?
In passages pointing out errors in the history of medicine.
Naturally, it was not part of any especially important subject, just the kind of term that showed up in a pass-or-fail course.
I really am smart.
To think I managed to remember even this.
I supposed I should thank the nineteenth century.
“Our sacrifice will become another patient’s life.”
I wanted to tell him to cut the crap while slapping the back of his head. You were making sacrifices, sure, but they were not becoming anyone’s life. You were killing them instead.
The fortunate thing was that the people I needed to persuade were not callow youngsters like these.
Blundell…… just wait.
“H-Hey. Where are you going?”
No longer wanting to exchange even another word with them, I hurried out of the ward and headed for Professor Blundell’s study.
It was not hard to find. For the sake of efficiency in both research and treatment, this hospital had crammed everything together in one place. From the standpoint of infectious disease, that was truly idiotic…… but since this era had no such concept to begin with, there probably had been no helping it.
Knock, knock.
Anyway, with those two hangers-on trailing behind me, I stopped in front of Professor Blundell’s study. The door was absurdly antique in style. It gave the impression that the person inside ought to be a philosopher rather than a doctor. But the times were what they were, and even Robert Liston the butcher, no, doctor, sat behind doors like this.
“Hey, hey. What are you doing……?”
“What are you doing! How dare you go to the professor’s study!”
The two who had followed me started making a fuss behind me.
But my resolve was firm.
I can’t stand watching any more people die, you bastards.
People were dying. Whether you were a doctor or had some other job, when human life was at stake, you had to get serious.
“Who is it?”
Of course, the voice from inside was deeper than I had expected, and for a moment I felt like turning back. But if it was Professor Blundell, I knew what he looked like. I could not so much as breathe a word like this to Robert Liston, but to Blundell, I could say it as much as I wanted.
“Hello, Professor. I’m Pyeong, a first-year student.”
“Mm. Come in.”
I had long since mastered the art of speaking crisply to people above me. So I was able to ask permission and step inside.
“Ah.”
And then I froze.
Robert Liston…….
Right, damn it, with that neck structure, of course a voice like that would come out!
Why the hell were you here too?
A giant of a man, well over 180 centimeters tall, was looking down at me. Blundell, the owner of the room, was seated, and since there was already such a difference in height to begin with, and he was sitting on top of that, Butcher, no, Doctor, was the only one that entered my field of vision.
I had no idea whether he had really earned a doctorate or not, but if I called him Doctor, at least he would not start cutting people up.
“What is it? What do you want?”
“Go on, speak, Pyeong.”
Anyway, now that I had come in, I could not keep my mouth shut. I placed the sheaf of papers on the table and spoke.
“Professor. The difference in the rate of puerperal fever or death between cases where midwives go to private homes to deliver babies and cases where births simply take place here in the hospital is more than tenfold.”
“Yes, and?”
“Until now it has been explained according to the miasma theory…… but there is one decisive difference between the two.”
“What difference?”
I launched it like a finishing blow, but Blundell remained indifferent. The one answering me now was Robert. He too sounded unenthusiastic, but at any rate, he was staring straight at me.
Right. Even if it’s the Doctor……
Wouldn’t it still be a good thing if at least this man could be convinced?
Thinking that, I showed them the words handwashing.
“When midwives make house calls, they wash their hands. But here, they don’t. This may be the cause of the difference.”
“Do you know what the miasma theory you are denying actually is?”
“It is the theory of bad air.”
“It is a theory that has been passed down for centuries. That is what you are denying now. Without any real evidence.”
“But…….”
“But it is a new perspective. Hm…… what shall we do…….”
In the end, the ball was passed to the butcher.
Depending on how he responded, perhaps he really could become a doctor after all.