Episode 80: Pain [3]
I’m sorry…
“Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?”
The only thing I can do for you is sing this song… No, I couldn’t even sing. I was tone-deaf.
“You don’t look okay.”
“No, then let me go!”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. If I let you go, you’ll go out and meet another woman.”
“Isn’t that okay?”
“If a person has syphilis, then of course it isn’t.”
“Love is not a sin.”
“Damn it…”
After chatting for a while, I realized that even if I were a good singer like 2AM, they wouldn’t have listened to me. This bastard… wasn’t he a little crazy?
“Aaaaaaa!”
“Uuuuuuuuu!”
“Please help me!”
Anyway, although I spoke very calmly, I was surrounded by screams. Naturally, the conversation between us was almost yelling.
“Please stay here for a while.”
“Yes? No, me! You have to take me!”
“Please stay. I have to see other patients too.”
“No, I… That son of a bitch.”
I started looking at the others, leaving Killian behind as he began swearing. If this had been yesterday’s Killian, no matter how tied up he was, he wouldn’t have dared to be treated like this out of fear. But now Killian felt like a puppy caught in the rain. He swore, but instead of being scary, he looked more like a chihuahua. Maybe when a person was completely discouraged, they looked weak no matter what they looked like. Anyway, I went around to the sick patients nearby and gave them boiled willow-bark water.
The amount is… Let’s give about one cup for now.
Do you know what willow bark extract does? It was none other than aspirin. Aspirin, a rare medicine that continued to be used even in the twenty-first century. Even in the United States, low-dose aspirin was recommended to prevent strokes or heart attacks, even for people who weren’t particularly sick. Of course, in Korea, hemorrhages were more common than ischemic strokes, so aspirin could actually cause more bleeding and wasn’t always recommended…
“Drink this!”
Anyway, I offered it, thinking it was a rare medicine, but the person who had been screaming in pain just a moment ago slapped my hand away. Oh, what a surprise. I almost dropped the pot. Then I would have to go all the way back to the countryside to peel the bark from that precious willow tree. The carriage wasn’t even mine. It was Alfred’s.
“So if I drink it, it won’t hurt?”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that in my life!”
“Yes, yes. Then.”
However, I didn’t argue. It wasn’t because I was scared. Actually, my eyes were wide open. This person had his arm cut off and was clearly dying… but I gave up on persuading him. Why? Because if he could still talk, that meant the pain was bearable, and if it was bearable, he wouldn’t drink this suspicious-looking medicine I was giving him.
“Can I help you?”
“No… no…”
Of course, with the help of Liston’s assistants, I thought I could probably make him take not only the willow-bark water but the bark itself. These men were masters at binding people and forcing things down their throats. Almost like monsters. Even so, I had no intention of forcing it yet. This was an analgesic, so he wouldn’t die if he didn’t take it. It was only meant to relieve pain. Besides, force-feeding a patient when I didn’t know the proper dosage seemed unethical.
“Help me… Release me… I won’t meet any women…”
Well, looking at Killian, I had already given up on the idea of ethics. This was a slightly different matter, but that man was one hundred percent lying. No, how could he even glance at the nurse in this situation? Should we really cut it off like Liston said?
“Give it to me! Me!”
While I was lost in thought, one of the patients, in so much pain that he couldn’t even scream properly, raised his hand. He looked a bit out of his mind. In other words, he was out of his mind. It was the perfect situation to take this medicine.
“I’ll give it to you.”
“Ugh.”
“Just this once. Uh, slowly. There, you got it down.”
“Uuuuuuu. Is this an Oriental secret?”
“No, it’s not.”
“Is this a witch’s spell? Town.”
I guess he really was going crazy, because he kept making strange noises, so I struck him on the back of the neck. I tried it in this uncertain situation, and it worked. And… I also thought the chaos around Liston wasn’t going anywhere. People were all crowded into one room…
“Why are you hitting me?”
Oh, I didn’t knock him out. I was just surprised. Anyway, I returned with a normal doctor’s face and said,
“I didn’t hit him. I helped him digest it.”
“Yes…?”
“Just wait a moment. The pain will ease.”
“Eww… it still hurts so much… please…”
“We have to wait.”
Even after seeing that, some of the people driven half-mad by pain asked for my elixir and drank it.
Of course, the overwhelming majority refused to the end. However, even those people kept glancing at the ones who had taken the medicine. If it really worked, wouldn’t they ask for it right away?
Even aspirin… after you take the medicine, it takes about ten minutes to work.
Actually, I hadn’t planned to do anything more than this. Drugs distributed in the twenty-first century were the final product, with fixed dosages and optimized formulations for better absorption. Was I supposed to believe I had succeeded just by boiling bark? It made no sense. Aside from the dosage, everything was inferior in efficacy and timing. So I planned to go see the patients I had operated on in my spare time. Since there hadn’t been much talk so far, we could apply the proverb: no news is good news…
These bastards, when a person dies, they either carry them to the grave or dissect them…?
Surprisingly, human life in the nineteenth century was really cheap. This was true even if a person died after scheduled surgery at the hospital. If you were high-ranking, the story would be different, more so than in the twenty-first century, but for ordinary people, it was bad enough that I wondered whether it was even okay to treat people like this. What that meant was that my patient might have died before I even knew it. Even worse, these people sometimes told patients who weren’t dead that they were dead.
“Uh, Doctor.”
“Are you here?”
Fortunately, though it was a bit miserable to call it fortunate, when I went to the hospital room, the patient was fine. He also looked fairly good.
“How are you feeling?”
I asked while examining the patient.
The blood too… It doesn’t seem to be flowing through. The gauze is all red… Still, if this is all…?
There was very little blood running down the back of his throat. I was told it was there, but at this level, I didn’t think anything serious would happen from the bleeding. Of course, the gauze was bright red, but it had been like that from the start, so I decided to ignore it. More important than that was infection. The bread had only started rotting yesterday, so how long would it take before antibiotics became usable? With various experiments, months or years would pass quickly, so that didn’t apply to the patients here now.
“No fever… Does anything hurt?”
I patted his cheeks and forehead. I hadn’t studied this deeply, but I thought I had heard somewhere that it hurt when sinusitis worsened or cellulitis developed here.
“No.”
“Is my nose weak?”
Nose? I felt anxious for a moment, but soon relaxed. Now that I thought about it, they hadn’t given him any common painkillers after surgery. It was almost a miracle that he was sitting there with such a healthy face. Anyway, I had cut inside his nose with a knife. It was natural for it to hurt.
Phew.
I sighed in relief and kept my expression calm.
“It may hurt. But it doesn’t hurt that much, does it?”
I said this without realizing it and looked back toward the amputation ward. Even though it was quite far, probably connected by a hallway, screams were coming from there. Maybe because of the ambiguous distance, it felt even scarier. The patient must have been hearing those screams the whole time, because he nodded vigorously. He must have thought that compared to those people, he wasn’t really sick.
“Oh, yes. It’s okay.”
“Good, good. Well then, let’s observe you a little longer… I’ll remove this gauze sometime tomorrow afternoon.”
“Ah.”
It was only when I mentioned tomorrow afternoon that despair appeared on the patient’s face. Well, it made sense. He could probably breathe through one side of his nose, but the other side, the side where the surgery was done, was completely blocked. If this happened, the other side would feel pressured too, making it hard to breathe.
I want to add more… but this is a foreign material, so we’ll remove it tomorrow…
Still, the reason it couldn’t be removed yet was purely bleeding. If there was a lot of blood, then I would have to consider… blood transfusion. If it were me, it would be possible, but only if the donor consented. Wouldn’t it feel like witchcraft if a novice like me, and an Asian at that, asked for blood instead of someone well-known like Blundell? I would do it without hesitation if necessary, but blood transfusion was something I wanted to postpone if possible.
“Okay then, that’s enough.”
After saying that, I headed back to the amputation ward. As I walked down the hallway, the screams grew louder, as if I was heading into hell. Liston and his group walked this path every day. The fact that I was now among them was even more surprising.
“How is it?”
As soon as Killian saw me, he begged, but since his eyes were fixed on the nurse, I ignored him. Instead, I asked the patient who had taken the medicine earlier, and he looked possessed.
“This is it.”
“What is?”
“It hurts… but the pain is gone. This… how the hell…”
“I gave you medicine. It’s medicine.”
“Actually, I drank it to die. I thought it would be better to die.”
No, what did this man think of people? While thinking that, I looked into the pot and realized I really couldn’t blame him. No matter how you looked at it, it looked dangerous. It was black… no, not just black…
“How is the patient?”
“Me too… it hurts, but it’s bearable.”
“Okay.”
The others were also showing improvement. It seemed I was lucky. They had only received one cup, but it seemed to be the right amount. Of course, since this medicine could cause gastrointestinal issues, we would have to wait and see… For now, if it could relieve the pain of amputation, then whatever it was, this medicine could be called a miracle.
“Oh, hey!”
“Me too!”
“Me too!”
As I thought this, the screams in the ward suddenly unified into one cry.
“Me too!”
Translator’s Notes
2AM — South Korean ballad group referenced jokingly for good singing.
Syphilis — A sexually transmitted bacterial infection. In this period, it was difficult to treat and could become chronic or fatal.
Willow bark — Bark from willow trees that contains salicin, a natural compound related to aspirin.
Aspirin — Pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory drug derived historically from salicylate compounds.
Low-dose aspirin — Small daily aspirin dose sometimes used to reduce the risk of blood clots, strokes, or heart attacks, depending on patient risk.
Hemorrhage — Bleeding, especially excessive or dangerous bleeding.
Analgesic — Pain-relieving medicine.
Gag reflex — Reflex that triggers choking or vomiting when the back of the throat is stimulated.
Antibiotic — Medicine used to treat bacterial infections.
Sinusitis — Inflammation or infection of the sinuses, which can cause facial pain, fever, and swelling.
Cellulitis — Bacterial skin and soft-tissue infection that can cause redness, swelling, pain, and fever.
Foreign material — Any non-body material placed inside or against the body, such as gauze or packing; it can increase infection risk if left too long.
Blood transfusion — Transfer of blood from one person to another, used to treat severe blood loss.
Gastrointestinal issues — Problems involving the stomach and intestines, such as nausea, stomach pain, or bleeding.