Poison, Pure Poison
As the two of us stood there wearing wicked smiles, I felt a sudden prickle of unease. Glancing around to see what was amiss, I realized the patient lying right beside me had finally opened his eyes.
Well, well. As the old saying goes, the foot of the lamp is always the darkest. When on earth did he wake up? Surely he hadn't overheard our conversation?
"Do we need to take care of him?"
Ah, that wasn't me. That was Liston. It sounded like a natural continuation of my own train of thought, but I swear it wasn't.
"Take care of... whom?"
"Just wondering if you heard anything."
Liston stared down at the patient—or rather, the medical student. The boy's pupils were trembling uncontrollably. From a rational perspective, does it make any sense for a pair of reputable physicians to casually discuss corpse procurement and then debate rubbing a patient out? It was enough to baffle anyone. He should have been utterly frozen in confusion, yet whether out of primal terror or the sharp wits required to enter this academy, the young man made a swift calculation.
"What... what happened?" he stammered, blinking innocently. "I truly just opened my eyes."
"Ha-ha, good lad."
"Yes, that's credible enough," Liston agreed.
If that was acting, the boy deserved a theatrical award. In all likelihood, it was, but it gave us the reassurance that nothing untoward would leak out. Thus, our dear student was spared an untimely demise.
In the grand scheme of things, that was a trifling matter. Our true task from here on was to pour every ounce of our effort into preventing London from drowning in that vile green poison. For an ordinary doctor, such an undertaking would be impossible. Especially for an Asian like me—had I raised the alarm alone, the chance of being told to drink the dye myself was an absolute hundred percent.
"Let us summon the police first," Liston said.
"Understood."
Fortunately, I wasn't alone. I had Liston. And Liston was a force of nature only I could control.
Well, the hospital director can manage him too, I suppose.
Come to think of it, what kind of relationship did those two have? The director provoked him mercilessly on a regular basis. In any ordinary circumstance, Liston's fists would have been dripping red with blood. Most physicians, no matter how robust or physically conditioned, refrain from actual fisticuffs, but Liston was a certified master of facial reconstruction via blunt force trauma.
How has the director survived this long? Could the director secretly be a martial arts master himself? No, that was impossible. People say technique can overcome raw strength, but against the sheer horsepower Liston possessed, technique and finesse were utterly meaningless.
"What are you brooding over?" Liston grunted.
"Nothing, sir. Nothing at all."
"At any rate, the constable has been called. Let us get this boy's soiled breeches sorted out."
"Right away, sir."
"Don't do it yourself, Taepyeong. A professor has no business cleaning filth. Hey, you. Don't you have any friends?"
Calling in an acquaintance of the patient rather than hospital staff—such was the reality of nineteenth-century medicine. In this era, unless you paid extra out of pocket, changing bedsheets fell strictly upon the patient's family or the patient himself. The real problem was that both patients and physicians deeply questioned whether clean sheets were even necessary, meaning most hospital mattresses were actively rotting away. Compared to that grim standard, this lad had it exceedingly well.
"I do have friends, sir," the boy replied weakly.
"Splendid. Fetch them. You can sit up, can't you? Taepyeong, does he still need this thing stuck in him?"
"He should be able to take fluids orally now."
"Then pull it out."
"Yes, sir."
"Ugh..."
The boy truly was in a privileged state. It felt a bit hollow to call someone fortunate when he had ingested arsenic just yesterday and spent the night knocking on death's door, but at least his sheets were clean. His trousers were ruined from soiled dignity, yes, but his life had been plucked from the grave by an intravenous fluid team forged in the crucible of the Seine River epidemic. On top of that, he was surrounded by medical personnel so fanatical about hygiene that they scrubbed their hands raw before touching anything. A nineteenth-century observer might shrug at the former, but the latter was nothing short of miraculous. Even in a twenty-first-century university hospital, doctors didn't wash their hands with such religious mania.
"Hold still for a moment," Liston barked. "You'll bleed."
"Y-Yes, sir. Ack—ugh!"
"I am not trying to hurt you! We have to stitch it shut so you don't bleed out."
"Yes, yes, sir!"
The moment I withdrew the needle, Liston seized that split-second opening to drive a suture through the tissue. It was only a single stitch, but placing a stitch into a punctured jugular vein was a feat of extraordinary dexterity. Witnessing such precision proved that Liston's natural gifts and surgical discipline were terrifyingly real. If guided properly, he would achieve far greater renown than I ever could. Of course, he was already getting up there in years.
Surely he won't drop dead prematurely, will he?
Modern folks might scoff at calling a thirty-year-old an older man, but average life expectancy in the nineteenth century hovered in the low forties. Aristocrats lived longer, and the overall average was heavily dragged down by horrific infant mortality, but if you met an ordinary laborer in his forties, the sight would shock you. They looked closer to sixty. Even Liston carried the rugged, weathered visage of a man well past forty.
I'll have to manage his health meticulously so I can put him to work for decades to come. Wasting Liston's genius would be a tragedy, but the mere thought of losing my ultimate surgical multi-tool sent a cold shiver down my spine. That simply wouldn't do. I had to protect Liston at all costs.
"Aaaargh!"
"Stop howling! I'm not doing this for fun, I have to apply pressure to staunch the bleeding!"
"Hngh!"
"Keep looking at me with such suspicious eyes, boy, and I might just press hard enough to hurt."
"Mmph!"
The site I had opened was his neck. Normally, central venous catheterization utilizes the subclavian vein, resorting to the femoral or internal jugular only when necessary. Puncturing the subclavian vein was something I could do blindfolded—assuming I had proper instruments. But what did we have here? Our needles were crude, hand-filed implements that resembled carpenter's awls. Ramming a blunt spike under a collarbone risked puncturing the pleura in an instant, and once a lung popped, the patient's soul would take flight straight to heaven or hell. The femoral vein posed similar risks with infection and anatomical variance, so as a desperate compromise, I had made a small incision in the neck to cannulate the jugular. It was more superficial and easier to access, but it had one glaring drawback.
"C-Can't... breathe..."
"Hold on. Endure it."
Because the pressure point was right on his throat, it inevitably choked him.
"Khk... khk..."
"Just a little longer. Two minutes."
"Ghh..."
Fortunately, we weren't occluding his windpipe entirely—perhaps seventy percent of his airway was compressed.
"That will do," Liston declared, finally lifting his thumb.
"Phew..."
"Now, go get him washed."
"Y-Yes, sir!"
The student's friends standing behind us answered immediately, treating Liston's command as though it had been handed down by the Grim Reaper himself. Small wonder. The moment they arrived, they had witnessed a towering giant holding a needle in one hand while ruthlessly throttling their companion with the other.
"Ensure that dirty water doesn't splash onto his neck," I warned sternly. "If the miasma from that filth seeps into the puncture, your friend will die."
"Yes, yes, Doctor! Please spare him!"
"I said your friend will die, not you."
"Understood, sir!"
One might think I was laying it on thick, but caution was never redundant in this era. Nineteenth-century hygiene was so abysmal that people believed anything was acceptable so long as it didn't reek. Had I merely told them to wash him, they likely would have splashed a cup of water over him, wiped off the largest chunks, and called it a day. Fortunately, our apostle of antisepsis, Joseph, had accompanied them, so no half-measures would be tolerated.
"Ah, perfect timing," Liston remarked.
While the patient was being hauled away for cleansing, the police arrived. It was the same officer from before. Judging by his demeanor and uniform, he held substantial rank—likely a deputy superintendent. Given that this incident brushed against Sir Jamie's affairs, the Metropolitan Police were paying close attention. Had this been a routine murder in the slums, they wouldn't have bothered investigating unless the culprit walked in and surrendered. In fact, officers usually just had pauper corpses tossed into mass trenches without a second glance.
"I understand you have uncovered something," the inspector said.
"Indeed," Liston replied. "Follow us to the lecture hall."
"Very well."
The inspector accompanied Liston and me toward the lecture hall lined with the confiscated arsenic goods. Outside the entrance stood Colin, standing guard like a sentry.
"No one has entered, sir," Colin reported crisply.
"Well done."
"It was my duty, Professor."
After commending him, we pulled open the classroom door. Perhaps it was purely psychological, but an invisible haze of emerald gas seemed to roll out toward us. In truth, had the windows not been thrown wide open, the room would have been an active chemical trap.
"Calling this stolen loot is rather harsh," Liston scoffed. "These were legitimate promotional gifts."
"Gifts... regardless, explain what you found."
"The students who were stationed inside this room exhibited acute symptoms of arsenic poisoning yesterday," Liston stated. "Two of them. One was stationed near the entrance and recovered swiftly, but the other barely regained consciousness just now and is currently washing the filth from his trousers."
"Filth...?"
Seeing the inspector's furrowed brow, I stepped in to clarify. Had this been France, I would have had to keep my mouth firmly shut, but this was London. Here, I had assisted police investigations, saved a prominent lord from having his testicles carved off, and was slated to perform another anatomical demonstration for the future queen. The inspector was well aware of my renown and listened in silence.
"Severe diarrhea is a hallmark symptom of arsenic poisoning," I explained.
"Ah... but I have heard that such purges often occur during legitimate medical treatment as well."
Bloody hell. I nearly took a swing at him. Renowned or not, striking a high-ranking police officer would invite disastrous complications, so I clamped down on my temper with everything I had.
"Indeed, aggressive treatments can induce purging," I conceded evenly. "However, toxic exposure produces the exact same reaction. These boys had no prior ailments whatsoever before stepping into this room. To claim their collapse was the result of a therapeutic process rather than blatant poisoning defies all logic, does it not?"
If I truly wanted him to comprehend, there were ways—such as locking the inspector in a room with Liston for three days while we drilled toxicological theory into his skull. But was it worth wasting my time on a single policeman? Even Liston, Blundell, and my apprentices had yet to fully master modern pharmacology. My time was far too valuable.
"Hmm. It sounds plausible," the inspector murmured.
"One of them nearly died," Liston emphasized. "That was no medical treatment."
Endorsed by London's foremost surgeon and its fastest-rising prodigy, the inspector's skepticism began to crack. Yet he remained hesitant.
"Then are you asserting that all these arsenic-dyed goods are lethal?"
"Precisely," Liston declared. "Every last one of them must be outlawed."
"Outlawed...? Do you truly believe such a decree is possible?"
The inspector's weary response left me dumbfounded. People were dropping dead, and he was asking if a ban was possible?
No... wait. The shock that had fled my mind quickly returned. Nothing about the situation had changed, but a sudden realization of the era struck me. This was nineteenth-century London, the absolute pinnacle of unbridled capitalism. So long as the wealthy turned a handsome profit, the lives of the lower classes counted for nothing. Hadn't white phosphorus matches been banned exclusively in London while the rest of the empire continued to poison matchgirls?
"People are dying from this, Inspector," I pressed.
"People die every day," the inspector countered calmly. "However... aristocrats could perish as well. You are saying those emerald gowns are equally dangerous, are you not?"
"Yes! The nobility are in direct peril," Liston barked.
"Even so, you will need undeniable proof to convince the authorities."
"Undeniable proof?"
If such proof were simple to provide, we would have presented it already. Just as a scowl began to form on my face, the inspector delivered the killing blow.
"It just so happens that Sir Jamie is heavily invested in this enterprise. Do you truly believe a peer of the realm will back down over a mere physician's warning?"
"Ah."
Of all the nobles in Britain, it had to be Sir Jamie. That was the very man who had nearly allowed his testicles to be sliced off simply because his prostate felt uncomfortable. He was an individual as far removed from scientific rationality as a man could possibly be. Unless a disaster of catastrophic proportions struck him personally, he would never retreat.
"Furthermore, the color is sweeping Paris by storm," the inspector added with a helpless sigh. "High society is completely enchanted by it. I am sorry, gentlemen, but the best I can do is quietly warn my personal acquaintances to steer clear..."
A shock on par with a botched castration... something visceral enough to shatter their delusions...
"I see," Liston muttered, stroking his chin. "Hmph."
Wait.
"Hold on a moment," I said.
Just as the inspector and Liston were about to resign themselves to defeat, a devilish scheme flashed through my mind. It was so diabolical that it bordered on monstrous, but desperate times called for monstrous measures.
"Is there... another way?" the inspector asked. "Ordinary methods will never suffice."
"Give him a moment," Liston warned, eyeing me warily. "My younger colleague possesses a malice far beyond ordinary men."
I gave a solemn nod to Liston's assessment. Normally, I would have taken offense, but my impending suggestion was vile enough to warrant the description.
"Inspector... do you have access to condemned criminals?"
"Pardon?"
"Let us dress them," I said with a flat, cold smile. "Put the death row inmates in the green gowns."
"Oh..."
The inspector stared at me, his eyes widening in horror, before quickly averting his gaze and nodding in stunned comprehension. And Liston? Even the fearless Robert Liston took a deliberate step backward.