Chapter 6: Entering Medical School [2]
Chapter 6: Entering Medical School [2]
The anatomy written across the slightly cracked blackboard was, unexpectedly… fairly decent.
This really was unexpected, but it was actually fairly decent.
To the point where I almost thought, He’s pretty good, isn’t he?
Especially… his knowledge of the limbs is quite impressive.
Maybe because he cut them off all the time.
His knowledge of the anatomy of the arms and legs could genuinely be called high-level.
Strictly speaking, dissection of the limbs was the easiest anyway.
There were no organs there.
Just tissues made up of muscles, bones, and ligaments.
But after everything I had seen so far had been such a shock, the fact that this so-called professor actually possessed this much knowledge felt deeply surprising.
“Right, for today I only gave you a broad overview. Now let’s go to the Anatomy Lab.”
“Yes, Professor!”
After talking nonstop for nearly two hours without even a break, Doctor Robert Liston headed straight for the Anatomy Lab.
By twenty-first-century standards… wouldn’t we still be pre-med students?
Pre-med students doing anatomy lab.
What kind of absurd speed was this curriculum?
This is a good thing.
There was no room for dissatisfaction.
Naturally.
All I could think about was becoming a doctor as quickly as possible so I could enlighten this barbaric era.
It was not because of any sense of superiority.
It was simply because the medicine of this era was utterly hopeless.
“All right, come in.”
“Ugh.”
“Urgh.”
The Anatomy Lab itself proved that point immediately.
Who the hell lets people go into an Anatomy Lab wearing the same clothes they came in with when it smells this bad?
Did these people really lack even the most basic level of common sense?
“What are you doing?”
“Ah, yes.”
Of course, I could not say any of that out loud.
The social climate was what it was, and above all, Doctor Robert Liston was fucking terrifying.
What would happen if I refused to go in?
Wouldn’t I just die?
No… no. If we do this bare-handed… we’ll die too.
Thinking that, I stepped up behind Doctor Robert Liston and the medical students who had entered one or two years before us, and I knew at once.
Any kind of bacteria could grow in a corpse left in this state, and if you got infected by it, you would die.
This was an era with not only no antibiotics, but no disinfection either.
The only reason these people had survived so far—and especially the reason Doctor Robert Liston himself had survived—had to be sheer luck.
“For now, just watch carefully. Even putting a knife to a corpse is no easy task.”
The one fortunate thing was that we would not have to touch the body ourselves today.
“Now, this is the leg. It’s the area we’ll operate on most often. You saw it earlier, right? This is how you cut through the thigh.”
Even the senior medical students would not get a chance to lay a hand on it today.
Just as when he operated, Liston gripped the thigh tightly with one hand and swung the knife with the other, tearing through skin and muscle in a single stroke.
Crazy bastard.
No matter that it was a corpse, the tissue still would not be that soft.
“I can cut through a living person in thirty seconds too. You all must not take longer than five minutes at the most. Otherwise the patient will die…”
Looking around, the others all seemed astonished by Doctor Robert Liston’s almost possessed knife work.
Joseph was muttering to himself again, I want to become like that too.
I was the only one shocked for a somewhat different reason when the door creaked open.
Given the setting, it immediately sent a chill down my spine.
“Professor, there’s a patient.”
But the person who entered was someone familiar.
I did not know his name, but in any case, he was Doctor Robert Liston’s assistant.
“Really? Then let’s go.”
At the mention of a patient, Doctor Robert Liston casually picked up the very knife he had just used and followed the assistant out.
Wash that thing first!
I wanted to shout that.
But Doctor Robert Liston was too big, and above all, he was holding a knife.
Watching him slash someone else with that knife would be horrifying enough, but it would be even worse if he slashed me.
The only way is for me to somehow become an influential doctor… and change all of this.
For now, there was nothing I could do.
Maybe it would be different if I were some high-ranking noble.
But I was, at best, just some strange fellow from the East.
I had only managed to get in here thanks to the Lister Family’s kindness and Doctor Robert Liston’s odd tolerance, and I was supposed to risk offending him?
That was absurd.
“What are you idiots doing? Follow us!”
As I was chewing over those thoughts, the assistant barked at us.
Ah… so we’re going too?
Apparently it was not just that there was no pre-med. You could jump straight into clinical observation as well.
Then again, I had heard that medical schools themselves had only been established not that long ago, so it would have been stranger if they actually had a proper academic system.
In fact, even in Upton, people who were not doctors at all—just oddballs of some kind—went around claiming they could treat patients.
If it was like that even in a place right near London, despite being called the countryside, what must it have been like elsewhere?
Probably, across all of Britain, the proportion of people treating patients who had so much as attended medical school at all would have been barely a handful.
“Wow…”
“Ah, this is your first time here, isn’t it?”
In any case, by the time we followed him, we had reached the hospital.
The medical school and the hospital were so closely attached they might as well have been the same building.
“Ah, yes. That’s right.”
The assistant spoke to Joseph in a friendly tone.
It seemed he knew Joseph came from a well-off family.
Then again, there was no way he would not know.
We had paid a huge amount to get in.
“There are so many patients in London… the beds are always full. The patients may suffer for it, but for us, it means learning opportunities are everywhere.”
“Ah…”
The assistant pointed here and there through the hospital, his eyes shining.
Each ward held at least ten to twenty patients.
Even a six-person room was miserable enough when it got crowded, but more than twenty patients in a single room—
Uh…
As we passed by, I noticed a patient who looked obviously stricken with terrible abdominal pain.
No special examination had been done yet, but I could tell.
That patient needed surgery.
A surgeon’s intuition?
Nothing so grand. Anyone with eyes could tell.
“Ugh, aaaagh!”
“Excuse me, Professor.”
“I’m not a professor, I’m an assistant. I work under Doctor Liston.”
So I called out to the assistant first.
I knew he was not a professor, but I called him that on purpose.
No one ever disliked being regarded more highly than they were.
Especially when they were working under someone else as an assistant.
I was the same when I was a fellow. Whenever someone called me professor, it felt pretty damn good.
He’s smiling.
Sure enough, a smile he could not quite suppress appeared at the corners of the assistant’s mouth.
“Yes, Assistant. That person over there… he seems to be in terrible pain. Will he be all right?”
“Hm? Where? Ah, over there. That’s not a ward for patients needing surgery.”
“Ah…?”
Not a surgery case?
He’s clutching his stomach and rolling around in agony right now…?
At this rate, he could really die on the spot.
Whether he had read the emotion on my face or not, the assistant spoke in the same calm tone as ever.
“They’ll probably treat him later. You two may be aiming for surgery, but… well, you’re students here, so no one will complain if you observe.”
“Ah…”
“Go take a look. Professor Jémel from Paris should be in charge. He’s one of the few who’s properly trained.”
“Ah, yes. Paris…”
Paris.
London was already like this, so what must Paris be like?
Maybe because the name itself sounded like flies, it did not seem as though it would be very clean either.
Anyway, with absolutely no expectations, I followed Doctor Robert Liston out into the square in front of the hospital.
It was not that I had gone out because I knew the square was the destination.
I just kept walking, and it turned out to be the square.
Again?
Seeing my alarm, the assistant continued speaking.
Maybe because Joseph was rich and I had called him professor, he seemed to be treating us fairly well.
“You two are lucky. Normally amputations like this don’t happen very often… Ah, but you two would know. That patient you saw before, remember?”
Let’s not talk about the patient who should have died.
I’m starting to feel depressed again.
I became a doctor because I wanted to save people.
And I even became a professor because I wanted to save more of them.
“He’s very much alive, and because of that, patients have been flooding in since then.”
“What? He lived?”
“Yeah. He lived. Good thing, right?”
He lived?
After they made him drink all that alcohol, and after they cut off his leg with that filthy knife?
“Where… where is he?”
“Where? He’d be at home, probably. Somewhere nearby. Why?”
“Would it be rude if I visited him once?”
Just how strong could a human be, to endure that and survive?
How did patients in this era live after undergoing an amputation?
All kinds of questions came flooding into my mind.
If I could confirm it with my own eyes, then the trouble of going to a stranger’s house would be nothing.
There was something I had learned from the lecture earlier.
I had expected it, but still.
There was nothing here for me to learn.
What I lacked was practical familiarity, and that was not something I could make up for just by studying.
“He’ll be pleased. A medical student coming to visit him, after all. I’ll give you the address later.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you.”
“Right. Then… I’ll go restrain him first.”
“Restr— ah, yes.”
After saying that to me, the assistant went over to Doctor Robert Liston.
“Aaaagh! Save me!”
As before, the prisoner—no, the patient—was screaming.
His eyes were bloodshot, and he was genuinely begging for his life.
Naturally.
A huge man like Doctor Robert Liston was striding toward him with a knife in hand.
“Wine.”
Doctor Robert Liston stopped before the patient and, like an executioner, demanded alcohol and shoved it toward the man’s mouth.
“Drink. It’ll hurt less.”
“I-I’m a Quaker!”
But the patient clamped his mouth shut and shouted that instead.
Without realizing it, I turned to look at Joseph, and Joseph closed his eyes and began to pray.
Quakers did not drink alcohol.
The Lister Family sold alcohol, but most Quakers were rigid, uncompromising people of principle.
“Ah. Then today will hurt.”
At the word Quaker, Liston stopped insisting and merely shook his head.
It’s not only going to hurt today, is it…?
He said it with astonishing shamelessness.
“Then just endure it.”
“Ugh.”
No, maybe shameless was not the word. Maybe it was simply horrifying.
He was cutting off a man’s leg with a knife and telling him to just endure it.
Was that really something a doctor should say?
Whoosh—
Regardless of what I thought, Doctor Robert Liston swung his sword—no, his surgical knife—and neatly sliced through the patient’s leg.
“AAAAAAGH!”
The scream followed, and Doctor Robert Liston calmly began stitching the blood vessels.
“AAAAAAGH!”
Just then, a scream rang out from the direction we had just come from.
The patient I had seen earlier flashed into my mind.
For some reason, I felt sure it had to be him.
I found myself turning my head when Joseph spoke.
“Want to go take a look?”
“If we go now, do you think Doctor Robert Liston will let that pass?”
“It’s not like we’re going off to play. We’re going to see a patient.”
Wouldn’t he just ask what we thought we knew, going off to see a patient?
Even when I said that, it made no difference.
“Still, aren’t you curious?”
True.
This was the guy who had watched that surgery the other day and decided to become a doctor.
That meant he was no ordinary lunatic.
Me?
I was not much better.
Before I knew it, I was already in the ward.