Episode 91: Antibiotics…? [2]
“Huhahaha!”
Jémel’s laughter rang out in the distance. It was nothing less than the laugh of a true madman. That bastard, seriously…
Among patients, there are bad ones… There are patients… Even if they seem fine, you’ll still think they’re not fine. Bastards like that.
I was one hundred percent sure. Absolutely sure. My whole body itched to do something right now. Was it because this was the Age of Exploration? Especially the British. They seemed full of confidence, building the British Empire at a time when their arrogance showed no sign of stopping. Well, I thought maybe I could do the same.
Queen Victoria will appear soon, right?
No matter how much I studied science and liberal arts, I still knew that much common knowledge. Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, opening the famous Victorian era, Britain’s peak period. The problem was that this was a story about the country, not medicine.
What… There were no incidents that made doctors more cautious…? No, there probably were plenty, but they just aren’t known…
Wasn’t there so much dark history in medicine that it was almost painful to talk about? Medicine was the best example showing that good intentions did not always lead to good results. How many things supposedly done to save people had actually contributed to killing them?
“Hey, Professor Blundell!”
Anyway, Jémel gave up. That bastard was strange. Should I say he was not at all prepared to be convinced? Honestly, I thought Jémel had seen enough of my skills by now, but his mind was still closed.
“Huh? Oh, who am I again? Doctor Pyeong. Oh yes, you were looking at that Killian too. Isn’t it amazing?”
In contrast, Blundell was open-minded. I should have been able to convince him. At the same time, he was the type who would otherwise end up causing trouble. Oh my god… He was the one who thought mixing blood and giving it to patients was a good idea? It wasn’t even a cocktail. How could anyone think of mixing blood?
“No, it’s surprising. However…”
“Using mercury chloride and mercury together is so effective! I’m truly surprised, haha. This is truly the discovery of the century!”
“No… Wait a minute. But where are you going now?”
Even though I called out to Blundell and he answered, he did not stop walking. I felt anxious. They were not about to dunk gynecological patients in mercury, were they?
“Uh…?”
But as we walked, the path became familiar. What was at the end of this road…
“Professor Liston is here…?”
“Oh, you didn’t know? Liston also has syphilis.”
“Yes…?”
No… A medical school professor… with syphilis? Are you insane?
“I came to tell him this good news.”
“No… Then.”
“I welcome this treatment before anyone else. Haha.”
“Ah… That.”
It was shocking that Liston had syphilis… and that he told me. Anyway, one thing was certain. Liston was also crazy about experimentation and would not turn down this kind of treatment.
“Okay? Hmm… Then I suppose I should give it a try.”
As expected. Crazy bastard. You all know how it is.
“Wait, wait!”
I felt like he was about to jump into a mercury bath, so I raised my hand and shouted. If this were something with an unknown outcome, I might have left it alone. But this was mercury. The culprit behind Minamata disease. When it came to heavy metal poisoning, this guy was the textbook case. Even Qin Shi Huang died of mercury poisoning while trying to live forever, right? Above all, Liston was not only incomparable to Qin Shi Huang but also someone I knew. In this era, we were practically best friends.
“Huh?”
“Why? What is it?”
They stopped walking when they heard me shout. Whatever else, these two now listened to me at least once. Especially Liston. I had spoken to him more often than Blundell… Rather than practicing medicine, he had witnessed a miracle, right? I had crossed the line so many times that I had nothing to lose, even if I was witch-hunted.
“When I saw it… mercury wasn’t what was effective in treating Killian’s syphilis.”
“Yes, that’s right. We also used mercury chloride.”
“If that’s the case… then what are you going to do?”
That did not mean I was not frustrated. These people… Whew. I held back a sigh and continued.
“That’s not what I mean. Why are we using mercury now? What is the theoretical basis for saying mercury cures syphilis?”
“Basis…?”
“Isn’t it too obvious…?”
This would be hard for any scientist to ignore. Theory and evidence. Weren’t those the foundations of modern science? No matter how many cases you saw, without theory or basis, it was nothing more than coincidence.
In the same vein, doctors did not place much weight on individual patient experience.
“Don’t do that. Just say it. I know something too.”
Even those who seemed to think I sounded like a fool frowned at my questions and started to think. The doubts did not last long. There was nothing profound here. These were people who had been blessed by the universe’s energy when dealing with infections before. I did not expect this time to be any different.
“First of all, mercury has traditionally been associated with longevity.”
“Right. Isn’t it something that came from the earth?”
“If you look at it that way, everything is… Don’t you think so?”
“Is that so?”
“That’s what I heard.”
I was dumbfounded by how little difference there was.
“It makes you vomit, right? The thing causing syphilis is mixed in there.”
“You defecate a lot. All the bad things trapped inside come out.”
The next words sounded like a sin. This was certainly an age of barbarism pretending to be scientific. When on earth were you supposed to use a laxative? The Industrial Revolution had happened, but people’s minds seemed stuck in Hippocrates’ era.
“If that’s the reason, many other medicines cause vomiting… Aren’t there many that cause diarrhea too? Also, vomiting and diarrhea are symptoms of enteritis. They aren’t normal.”
“Hmm… I think that’s stretching it.”
“Fine. Do you know how many people you’ve treated that way?”
“Do you know the percentage of patients who fully recovered?”
“Haha. Syphilis. It keeps coming back… It isn’t treatable. If it recurs multiple times, there’s no cure… It heals well at first.”
“Yes, mercury alone works better. It just doesn’t heal quickly.”
Gets better?
I was confused by what they said, then remembered syphilis’s natural course and nodded. Syphilis started as primary syphilis, where ulcers formed and disappeared. Then it hid and relapsed as secondary syphilis, hid again, and relapsed as tertiary syphilis, and so on. At that stage, they could not even do a simple blood test, much less confirm the bacteria. It would have been difficult for them to understand this. Of course, if they observed properly, all recurrent syphilis cases were similar and would reveal something strange.
“No, no. So quickly… Have you ever seen a reaction to medication instead of something dragging on for months?”
“There isn’t one.”
“Does that make sense?”
“Then we must think of causes other than mercury.”
“There must be some reason.”
“You’re not saying putting a syphilis patient in an amputation ward will cure him, are you?”
Liston looked at me pitifully as I spoke. Ha. This was falling apart. Did he really think I would say something like that?
I’m doing this to save you!
Even I did not know what happened to someone who went into a mercury bath. In fact, in our time, mercury poisoning was mostly limited to certain industrial settings… It was a disease rarely seen in everyday life. But it could not be good. I did not even like looking at it. Still, London proudly called it that, but pooping and vomiting were exactly what they were.
Oh, I imagined it.
Recalling a scene so terrible it made me sick, I spoke with more desperation than before.
“I actually have something to confess.”
I took out the rotten bread I had kept in my pocket. The two men who had been silently watching me moved away.
“I respect your taste.”
Blundell gagged without looking at the bread.
“I… feel the same. Is that… traditional Joseon food?”
Liston was barely holding back his retching. I shook my head and explained what had happened. I bought this, let it rot, scraped off the blue moldy part, and fed it to Killian.
“Oh my god.”
“Oh, God.”
They suddenly started praying. No, what did that make the bastards who wanted to put people in mercury baths because I fed them mold?
“From what I saw, this was effective in treating syphilis. This is the biggest variable.”
“That… Ugh.”
“Are you saying you fed this to a person?”
“Isn’t it more humane than drowning him in mercury and making him defecate and vomit?”
“No, but still. This…?”
“So you were trying to feed me this too?”
Looking at Liston’s deeply worried face, I thought of penicillin. This drug I made was not really penicillin. It was just mold.
The side effects of penicillin… elevated liver enzymes, hypernatremia, hypokalemia, hyperkalemia, interstitial nephritis, hemorrhagic cystitis. Rarely, encephalopathy or epileptic seizures… If you add this, it won’t be impossible…
That meant we could not feed Liston right now. Maybe someday… It was not exactly the same mold.
“No. Not now.”
“Now…?”
“First of all, it isn’t urgent, right? Are you dating anyone?”
“No, but is that something I can say with certainty…?”
“Anyway, wait for now. As I continue observing Sir Killian… I’ll give you the treatment after checking whether this mold has side effects.”
“So you’re going to perform an experiment?”
Liston still looked grim. A human experiment, maybe… It could be. Even so, that was strange coming from people who thought mercury treatment was good. Anyway, I could not lie and had no reason to, so I nodded.
“Oh my god…”
“You… are you really a villain?”
Those words came back to me. Was it because they were ignorant? I did not know mercy.
Translator’s Notes
Mercury chloride — A toxic mercury compound historically used as a disinfectant and, wrongly, as a treatment for syphilis. It can cause severe mercury poisoning.
Syphilis — A sexually transmitted bacterial infection that progresses in stages. Before antibiotics, it often relapsed and caused severe long-term complications.
Primary / Secondary / Tertiary syphilis — The major stages of syphilis progression. Early sores may disappear on their own, making historical “cures” difficult to judge accurately.
Mercury poisoning — Toxicity caused by mercury exposure, affecting the nervous system, kidneys, digestive tract, and other organs.
Minamata disease — A severe neurological disease caused by methylmercury poisoning, historically linked to industrial mercury pollution in Japan.
Penicillin — The first widely used antibiotic, later discovered to be effective against syphilis.
Hypernatremia / Hypokalemia / Hyperkalemia — Abnormal sodium or potassium levels in the blood, which can affect the heart, nerves, and muscles.
Interstitial nephritis — Inflammation of kidney tissue, sometimes caused by medications.
Hemorrhagic cystitis — Inflammation of the bladder with bleeding.
Encephalopathy — A broad term for brain dysfunction caused by illness, toxins, metabolic problems, or medication effects.
Epileptic seizure — A sudden episode of abnormal electrical activity in the brain, which may cause convulsions or altered consciousness.