Chapter 29: Laughing Gas Party [2]
Chapter 29: Laughing Gas Party [2]
There was one fact I had overlooked.
I too had been exposed to the gas.
Which was only natural.
I had been standing right in front of it.
“Hey, hey, you’ll kill him like that. Ha ha!”
Joseph came over to my side, cackling.
“No... there’s a doctor here killing people!”
Alfred cackled too.
So I looked, and there was a little blood on the club.
Without realizing it, I must have gotten worked up while beating that bastard Colin, and somehow put in more force than I had meant to.
Oh?
My chest went cold, and I turned back toward Colin.
I had meant to rough him up a little, but I had not meant to kill him.
No, just imagine if I had broken something.
He was probably fairly well-connected, and in my current position, I would never be able to handle that.
Mm... ah. It’s just scraped here.
So I checked, and thankfully all that had happened was that a bit of skin had been scraped off.
One unusual thing was that even though I examined him, and though I was careless because I was also drunk and touched the wound, Colin did not notice at all.
Did I hit him on the head?
I was not entirely sure.
It could be that he could not feel pain because of the drug, but it could also be because I had struck him there.
Still... there was a possibility.
It might not just be an Analgesic.
But he had not been able to move while I was hitting him.
That much was certain.
If they just would not move... then there would be room to operate calmly, would there not?
That did not mean I could perform the kinds of operations I used to do, like a Whipple Procedure or Flap Surgery.
But in this era, people were hovering at death’s door from diseases far more trivial than those.
Appendicitis, for example.
To be more precise, it was an era when people dropped dead from Appendicitis all the time.
And that was something that really could be fixed with surgery....
“Hey, open your eyes.”
I thought I had been continuing that line of thought, but apparently I had fallen asleep.
I had no idea how much time had passed.
Anyway, Robert Liston was standing in front of me.
And his face looked perfectly normal again.
“Yes, yes, they’re open!”
I had definitely been moving my hands.
It looked obvious that if I did not open my eyes, I would get slapped across the face, so I answered at once.
Then the professor smacked his lips with what looked like regret and straightened up.
“You’re awake.”
The moment I realized I had really almost gotten hit, it felt like all the strength drained out of my body.
That was why I had to lean on Joseph and Alfred for support.
“Ugh.”
From the look of it, Colin was in the same state.
He was being held up by one of his lackeys.
I stared at him to see whether he remembered properly, and amazingly enough, the bastard met my gaze and smiled.
Idiot.
I beat the hell out of you, and you don’t even remember.
Or maybe you were just too happy to tell one thing from another.
“Heh heh.”
“This bastard’s weak against the gas.”
That thought put me in a good mood, so I laughed.
And the more I laughed, the better I felt.
It really made me understand why this was called a laughing party.
This is definitely a very strong drug....
Of course, I was a doctor by nature, so even while laughing, these were the thoughts going through my head.
“Well then, sleep well.”
“Huh?”
Before I knew it, I was in bed.
I had reached my room.
In other words, my memory was breaking off in scattered fragments.
No, I could not tell whether my memory had broken off, or whether I had fallen asleep and woken up.
Anyway, that gas they had used at the party... it was worth researching.
“Hoo....”
The first thought that came to me when I opened my eyes in the morning was, My head doesn’t hurt much.
Even if I had only been drunk, by now my head should have been aching.
“Hmm....”
It seemed the gas from yesterday did not remain in the body as much as I had expected.
Actually, it would not matter even if it did.
That would still be better than operating on a conscious patient.
To be honest, I wanted to use Opium if I could.
Though if I used Opium... it could suppress breathing and kill the patient.
Right. That was going too far.
I shook my head, and after eating breakfast, I headed to school with Alfred and Joseph as always.
“I’m going to the library for a bit.”
“Hm? Why? You’re not attending class?”
“Well... Professor Blundell doesn’t exactly take attendance, does he?”
“That’s true, but... isn’t listening to lectures more helpful than reading books?”
I wanted to say no.
Blundell.
That bastard....
He didn’t know anything.
Of course, he was still better than you lot....
“I’m too curious about something. Just tell me later what they said in class.”
“Mm... all right.”
If I said what I really thought, it would cause a scene, so I glossed it over.
It was not entirely a lie.
Ever since I beat Colin with that club yesterday, I had been dying to know everything, starting with the identity of that gas.
Surely... these bastards couldn’t have had an anesthetic gas sitting right there all along and still been doing those things, could they?
I hoped it had only been discovered recently.
No, if it had only come out recently... then it would not have been researched at all, would it?
No, I hoped it had been around for quite a while.
But if that’s true, then these people are so pathetic it’ll make me want to die, won’t it?
To be honest, I did not even know what I wanted.
That was how this era was.
Damn bastards.
They wavered back and forth with no consistency at all.
They seemed like they knew things, but they did not.
They seemed like they knew nothing, and in fact they truly knew nothing at all....
Nitrous Oxide.
Anyway, I still remembered the name the professor had mentioned on the way back yesterday.
Nitrous Oxide.
Nitrogen.
Didn’t the anesthetics used in surgery also contain nitrogen...?
It made me think I should have studied anesthesiology more seriously.
I could not even properly remember the names of the drugs, so how could I possibly remember their chemical components?
Instead of cursing out anesthesiology... I should have read even one more line.
Since we had never gotten along well, all I ever did was complain about them.
From our side, it was always an emergency operation and we kept telling them to hurry up, but they kept putting it off, so how could things be any different?
Wasn’t that true?
“Right, here it is.”
Since the university more or less aspired to be a comprehensive university, there were quite a few books related to chemistry.
Considering how enormous the library was, that was only natural.
The problem was, in which of these books would there be anything about Nitrous Oxide?
I could not know.
This era had no search function, so the only option was to crash headfirst into it.
At least the books are thin.
If there was one thing that could be called fortunate, it was that all the books were thin.
Naturally so, since they did not know much.
The problem was that just because it was not here, I could not firmly say it did not exist anywhere in the world....
“Hmm....”
I flipped through the pages, looking for Nitrous Oxide.
It was not easy.
To begin with, this was an age that used relief printing, intaglio, lithography, and the like, so the paper and print quality were terrible.
Some pages were even stuck together.
Damn nineteenth century.
“I can’t find it....”
Damn it.
Even after rifling through books for hours, it never turned up.
And had I learned anything in the process? Not that either.
For one thing, I was not a chemist, so I had no real interest in it, and on top of that, trying to study nineteenth-century science without background knowledge was too dangerous, so I had not even been reading very seriously.
What if I crammed in wrong information and ended up causing some disaster?
No, wait. Hold on.
Then a thought occurred to me.
In medicine... that is, even in modern medicine, did Evidence-Based Medicine not truly take root only in the late twentieth century?
Before that, Expert Opinion had been treated as the most important thing.
For example, if some professor who had been around for thirty years said, “Hey, this is what I think, so are you going to argue with me?” then everyone simply went along with it.
Back then I used to think, Why is that old bastard like that, and why was there ever such a primitive era? But after coming here, I felt like I understood.
Because asking people is the fastest way, isn’t it?
Evidence-Based?
Give me a break.
That only worked if you could actually find evidence.
When the source material itself was rotten from the start, what sort of damned evidence were you supposed to find?
The factory... the Chemist.
Honestly, it would probably be faster to go find a professor here.
But was that not something only our glorious white Englishmen could do?
If I went somewhere without notice—or even stepped into an unfamiliar street—I had no idea what kind of crime I might get dragged into.
And it was awkward to make use of Robert Liston too.
We may have become cronies, but it felt like that was only in my head.
Whatever I wanted to do, it felt like something could only really happen after I first handed over an anesthetic and then made more progress in anatomy.
“Alfred, Alfred.”
So I closed the book and ran to the lecture hall.
As it happened, Blundell had just finished his lecture—or rather, his string of nonsense—and was heading out.
“Ugh, that was too hard.”
“What? What was?”
“Ah... today we learned about pressure....”
“Pressure?”
What was there to learn about pressure?
The word that came to mind instinctively was Blood Pressure, but that could not be right.
As always, this era missed common sense by a wide margin.
There was a reason I kept wondering whether I had actually come to another world.
Blood Pressure... damn it.
How could sticking a needle into an artery and judging by the spray of blood count as taking blood pressure?
That was murder.
It should absolutely never be done.
“Anyway.”
If I dwelled on that thought too long, my mind would grow unsettled again, and before long I would probably find myself yearning desperately for the Laughing Gas from yesterday, so I changed the subject.
Fortunately, Alfred had not fully understood the lecture either, so he said nothing in particular.
He just stood there with that same stupid look in his eyes.
“Let’s head out first.”
“Hm? What about dissection?”
“Ah, dissection. Later. Let’s just go to the factory first.”
“Why? Did the glove tear? It looked like you couldn’t rip that thing even with a knife.”
Yes, exactly.
It was too tough, which was the problem.
That also meant it had hardened so much that it did not move entirely the way I wanted it to.
After using it, I found it had more problems than just dulling sensation.
“No, it’s not that. I need to ask that Chemist a question.”
“Ah... you couldn’t find it in the library?”
“No.”
“Right. What is there to learn from books anyway?”
Hey....
No matter how bad books were in this era, what kind of nonsense was that coming from someone who fancied himself a scholar?
Of course, since I was the one getting free rides in his carriage, I was not shameless enough to say that aloud, so I only nodded.
“That’s true.”
“Good. Let’s go. Anyway, after watching you yesterday... I realized there’s no point in us going first.”
And Alfred was this kind of person.
Even when someone who had entered a year later stood out, instead of jealousy he felt only pure admiration.
Personally, I thought that was just as difficult as standing out in the first place.
Rattle, rattle.
Anyway, the carriage rolled on, and before long it stopped in front of the factory.
The distance itself was not that far, so if this were Seoul, I would have walked, but this was London, so I took the carriage.
I had no desire to die in broad daylight and show up with a flourish as a corpse in the Anatomy Room.
“I want to know about Nitrous Oxide.”
“Hm? Nitrous Oxide?”
“Yes.”
After passing through those dangerous streets and entering the factory, I found myself facing the Chemist, who wore an indifferent expression.
Looking me straight in the face, he said exactly this:
“What are you trying to learn about that old and utterly unremarkable gas for?”