Chapter 7: You Mustn’t Do That [1]
Chapter 7: You Mustn’t Do That [1]
“Ugh. Ughhh!”
The patient I had seen earlier was now down beneath the bed.
He was trembling all over, cold sweat pouring off him.
“He looks like he has a terrible fever.”
To someone who was not a doctor, it was the kind of sight that would make them panic on the spot.
Because the man was shaking.
But I was different.
As I have said again and again, I had seen patients in far worse condition than this.
Becoming a surgery professor in South Korea was no ordinary thing.
So I was about to approach him calmly when a commotion broke out behind me.
“You there! What do you think you’re doing!”
No, he barked it like an order.
When I turned around, I saw a fleshy, plump middle-aged man standing there with a group of men behind him.
“Ah, I’m a student here.”
“A student? I haven’t seen you before.”
“I enrolled today.”
“Enrolled. Ah, that’s right. Today was the day the new students were coming in. Well, the intention to try is admirable enough, but step aside for now. This is a condition that needs a real doctor.”
“Ah, yes.”
So he was the doctor called Jémel or whatever.
Had they said he had studied abroad in Paris?
By the twenty-first century, South Korean medicine was far ahead of France’s, but what about now?
Just be better than London, you bastard.
I looked at Jémel with desperate eyes.
Like a skilled doctor, Jémel did not panic and approached the patient.
“He’s sweating a great deal. That’s a good sign.”
And then, in a calm voice, he began spouting utter nonsense.
Why is sweating a good sign…?
The sweat this patient was showing was not sweat from exercise, nor sweat from heat.
It was cold sweat.
There were already several possible causes of cold sweat that came to mind immediately.
Cancer, severe infectious diseases like malaria, metabolic disorders, and so on.
No matter how generously you looked at it, it could not possibly be a good sign.
“You said his stomach hurts?”
“Yes.”
In any case, Jémel still kept a calm face as he asked the assistant.
With the patient right there in front of him, and yet he did not ask the patient, only the assistant.
I remember thinking it was quite an innovative style of examination.
“Does it hurt here?”
“AAAAAGH!”
Then he just pressed down on the patient’s stomach.
You had to position the patient properly before pressing if you wanted an accurate reading.
It seemed that sort of common sense had not yet become widespread.
“It’s very hard. The flesh has clumped together.”
In any case, Jémel let out a long sigh and shook his head.
“Bring that over.”
He gave an order to the assistant.
The assistant ran off at once and came back carrying some vicious-looking instrument.
He also brought what looked like a basin, and no matter how I looked at it, it did not seem like something made for a good purpose.
But all the surgical instruments had looked like that too, so I kept watching just in case.
Joseph did too.
“Wow… that’s amazing.”
Apparently his thoughts were completely different from mine.
That won’t do, Joseph.
Saying things like that is not admiration.
Was there a single medical thing in anything that Jémel had said just now?
He was simply speaking nonsense in a calm voice.
“There’s too much blood pooled in this area, that’s why it’s like this. We’ll start by drawing some blood.”
I thought I had heard wrong.
Drawing blood?
Why would you draw blood from someone who was already sick?
This was not even an era when tests were possible.
“Now, stab here.”
While I was still thinking, No way, no way, Jémel picked up a pointed instrument and indicated the patient’s abdomen.
It did not look as though there was any anatomical consideration behind it.
In other words, he had pointed at just any random place.
“That won’t do.”
At the sight of it, those words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“What won’t do?”
Fortunately, only Joseph heard me.
Jémel and the assistants were bustling around to kill the patient—no, to save him, I should say?
Anyway, they were too busy to hear my muttering.
“No… why are they drawing blood?”
“That’s common sense.”
“Hm?”
“If something hurts, you have to draw blood. It’s because the blood has pooled there.”
“No…”
That common sense is twisted.
At this rate, that patient is going to die…
Thrust—
Regardless of what I thought, Jémel plunged the instrument straight into the patient’s abdomen.
Even then, I found myself wondering whether he had wiped that needle down.
Of course he didn’t.
He’ll probably spew that same bullshit again about experience and all that.
Which meant the patient, who already had some kind of inflammation in his abdomen, had just been stabbed with a contaminated needle.
Wouldn’t another word for this be murder?
“Ah, we weren’t lucky today.”
“Could it be because he didn’t drink any alcohol?”
By then, it seemed the amputation was completely over, because the corridor had grown noisy too.
At the front stood Doctor Robert Liston with a knife in his hand.
The assistant was chattering away beside him.
“Since we’ve received the donation anyway, we’ll dissect that patient soon enough.”
“Yes. We’ll deliver the condolence payment to the family.”
“Good. See that it’s done.”
Ah, so he died.
That patient from earlier had died.
In truth, that was only natural.
It was wrong from the start to expect a person to endure a surgery of that scale without anesthesia.
“Hm? Those two are my students.”
As I was thinking that, Robert Liston spoke.
Apparently he had spotted the two of us.
“Ah, Doctor Jémel.”
I thought I was about to get scolded, but fortunately he passed by us and headed toward Jémel instead.
They seemed fairly close.
“Doctor Liston.”
“Bloodletting?”
“That’s right.”
“I see.”
The two great men continued their casual conversation even while the patient was dying.
“He says his stomach hurts?”
“That’s right. He’s been admitted for about a week now… but he hasn’t gotten any better.”
“Ah… then you should try Bloodletting.”
“Exactly.”
No, that was not casual conversation.
Not a single proper thing had been said.
To begin with, the very fact that he had been lying here in this condition for a week made no sense.
Even if I gave them a hundred concessions and said this was an era without IV drips.
Then they still should have at least given him herbs or something.
“Have you used Opium?”
“Of course. But whenever the effect wears off, he starts hurting again.”
“Aha.”
Ah, so they had given it.
Opium…
No wonder the patient’s pupils had looked a little unfocused.
You damned bastards.
“Bloodletting is an important treatment too… do you mind if our students watch?”
“Of course! But that yellow friend of yours really is your student?”
“Yes, he is. He’s a lad guaranteed by the Lister Family.”
“Ahh. That Lister. I see. Their liquor tastes good.”
The two damned men kindly granted us the precious opportunity to formally observe the scene of a killing.
No words of thanks came to mind.
No, the whole thing felt nothing but horrifying to me.
“Ugh… ugh…”
The patient kept writhing in pain.
No, he looked like he was in even more pain than before.
That was only natural. He was already half dead, and now they had bled him on top of it.
I have to endure it, don’t I?
I wanted to step in.
Of course, even if I did, there was no guarantee I could save him.
I had never practiced medicine in a world without anesthesia or antibiotics either.
But even so, this is not right…
Still, I could not keep standing there in silence forever while a horrible killing was taking place right in front of my eyes.
Right, had it not been said that Westerners were supposedly good at discussions and the like?
When I went to America for training, I saw students asking questions with their hands in their pockets and everything.
“Excuse me…”
That said, I did not ask my question with my hands in my pockets.
I approached as politely as I possibly could.
“Hm? What is it?”
Fortunately, perhaps because Doctor Liston was somewhat broad-minded, or perhaps because the man had already taken a great deal of money from our patron and expected more, he accepted the question anyway.
“Um. May I examine the patient too?”
“Hm? You only enrolled today.”
He said What could you possibly know? in about as gentle a way as he could.
For someone who looked the way he did, he seemed surprisingly mild.
Or maybe our patron had simply paid him a truly enormous amount.
“Um…”
Fuck, what excuse do I give?
“In the Joseon where I come from…”
I had only been hesitating, but the words slipped out on their own.
No, why am I suddenly talking about Joseon here?
“Hm?”
I was confused myself, so how much more confused must they have been?
Jémel especially looked wide-eyed, as if he had never even heard the name Joseon before.
“It is still a country that has existed for six hundred years, so we do have medicine of our own there.”
“Oh-ho. Eastern medicine.”
“Aren’t they savages?”
I think there was something rather rude mixed in there, but I kept going anyway.
“We have exchanged knowledge with Qing… so our standards are not actually all that low.”
“Oh, Qing.”
“That place is still fairly, well…”
Right, so what I had heard back in high school must have been true.
Qing had long since declined into incompetence, but because of old prejudices, Europe still thought it was some impressive civilization, so mentioning Qing had the effect I wanted.
“To tell the truth, it is more than that… Do you know ginseng?”
“No.”
“Ginseng?”
“That is a Joseon medicine. Qing cannot get enough of it because they do not have it. In medicine, Joseon is better than Qing.”
That was probably true, wasn’t it?
We had Heo Jun and all.
Anyway, yes?
What I meant was, I was better than you lot.
“Ah, that’s right. In fact, Pyeong is good at dissection too. Not of people… shrimp and frogs, though. I wondered where he learned it myself… learned it in Joseon… no, that can’t be right. He was born here.”
Joseph spoke up to support me too.
It got a little strange at the end, but that did not matter.
“I heard my father worked as an assistant to a physician in Joseon.”
A lie that no one had any way to verify was not all that different from the truth.
“Let him take a look. It’s not like the patient will wear out from being examined.”
Then Doctor Robert Liston gave his permission.
“Yes, well. If there’s something to point out, that would be fine too.”
Jémel pursed his lips, but he nodded all the same.
Arrogant bastard.
You’re doing Bloodletting and you still have the nerve to purse your lips?
I thought that inwardly, but outwardly I stepped forward with a respectful manner.
Then I spoke to the patient.
“Sir, could you lie down for a moment?”
“Fuck off, you yellow bastard!”
Wow…
That crossed the line.
I’m trying to save you, and this is how you act?
“Sir, please lie down. This friend isn’t saying it for no reason.”
“Ugh… ugh…”
Should I call it fortunate?
Even before Joseph stepped in, the patient was already in too much pain to offer any real resistance.
So I laid him down on the floor myself and drew up his knees.
Then I opened his clothes and examined his abdomen.
Fuck…
Come to think of it, these bastards had not even exposed his abdomen before deciding on Bloodletting.
Even after stabbing him, they had only looked at the puncture site itself.
The whole thing was such a mess that it was genuinely hard to know where to begin criticizing it.
It isn’t reddish-purple yet.
Still, as I looked at the abdomen, I felt at least a little relieved.
Of course, it was difficult to confirm Peritonitis with the naked eye alone.
But it had not spread so far that nothing could be done.
“Where does it hurt the most?”
“My stomach! How many times do I have to say it!”
“No, even in the stomach area… there’s lower, middle, and upper. Which part hurts the most?”
“Uh… the lower?”
“When you say lower, the right side or the left?”
“Uh… the right side?”
In any case, I kept asking questions.
Because I was focused on the patient, I did not check the faces of the others.
In other words, at that moment, I failed to see the strange spark that had begun to glow in Joseph’s eyes and in Doctor Robert Liston’s.