Episode 92: Antibiotics…? [3]
I even heard them call me a villain… but I did not stop. No, it was more accurate to say I could not stop. With something like this, shouldn’t people at least be saved?
“But if it’s an experiment, I can’t be left out again.”
“I’ll join too. I know a lot of bad guys.”
Liston and Blundell were excited as well. Crazy bastards. Excited? In the end, it helped me too… What could I say?
“Eat!”
“S-Save me!”
“Ugh, ugh!”
They were prisoners dragged straight from jail. As I kept saying, wasn’t our Dr. Liston the man who amputated the police chief’s mother’s leg? Normally, he would have been an enemy, but luckily, the patient was anesthetized, survived without infection, and remained a benefactor. Most doctors would only help when absolutely necessary, but Liston was different.
“If there are any prisoners with severe syphilis, send them to me.”
He confidently walked into the police station and said that. A reasonable chief would have objected to prisoners being used this way, but this chief was a little odd.
“How much?”
How much? They had announced that they were going to conduct human experiments, but they did not plan to arrest anyone. They came willingly. Should I call that a virtue? Anyway, the hospital’s number of syphilis patients rose sharply. All of them were tied up by their limbs.
“Please save me! Doctor, please save me!”
Everyone looked at me as they shouted. Liston was not exactly the person to ask for mercy. No, looking at his face, it felt like I should ask him to save them even without a reason… Did they get the sense that they would not survive? Compared to Liston, Blundell gave a better impression, but it still was not perfect. Compared to them, I was young and small.
I’m sorry… Actually, I was the one who brought this up…
I felt like I would die if I said that, so I pretended not to hear them.
Whoop, whoop!
Meanwhile, pieces of rotten bread were shoved into their mouths. As I watched, I thought about the effort it took to make that stale bread and felt strange. Someday, it might be possible to extract the raw material from it and mass-produce it… but for now, that seemed like a distant dream. All we could do was leave bread out to rot under the same conditions. At the same time, I occasionally wondered whether it was right to do this as a doctor and scientist. No clear answer came to mind.
What would it be like?
I heard they visited a chemist along the way. I wondered if he had created an arsenic compound, but the only experiments possible now were baking, burning, or dipping arsenic in acid, so nothing promising had come out yet. I would say rotten bread had the best chance of curing them…
“Eww… Please have mercy. Never… I will never live in sin again!”
Thinking that, I felt a little less guilty about feeding bread to the prisoner with such an earnest face. Moreover, the sign around his neck showed that he was a murderer. Being caught in an era when arrests were rare meant it must have been a heinous crime.
“Eat. This is medicine.”
“I’d rather… I’d rather die!”
And it was therapy, after all. An experiment was still an experiment, right? Hadn’t I confirmed this bread’s efficacy with Killian? This meant they were receiving treatment over one hundred years ahead of time.
“Mm, mmmph!”
Anyway, all seven prisoners ended up with bread in their mouths. It felt a bit rushed.
Killian may have gotten better by chance. It’s unlikely, but it can’t be completely ruled out.
Nothing had been proven theoretically, right? Of course, we confirmed that the bread mold killed bacteria on agar plates, and Killian was cured. But I had not seen it under a microscope, nor could I tell if the mold growing on this bread was all the same. There were other molds growing on bread in other areas of my senior’s house that could not even kill the fungi on agar plates. Visually, it all looked like mold, but if I thought about it…
I don’t know if this is all the same mold or not… This is it.
That was what I thought, but what could I do after already feeding it to them? I only shook my head and left the room.
“You bastards!”
“Heavenly punishment will strike you!”
“Die!”
Then all sorts of curses poured out. I was not surprised. Since they were heinous criminals scheduled for execution, I could not expect them to have good personalities. They were angry about being fed rotten bread, so… To be honest, I was a little scared, but Liston was not.
“Should I gag them? They’re noisy.”
“Should we?”
Blundell said the same thing. Scary bastards.
“Oh, by the way, what happened to those patients with phantom pain?”
“Phantom pain? Ah… Those patients? Yes, I think it’s a good name. Haha. Very nice. Very good. Not all of them, but usually, the response is good.”
“Thank goodness. Shall we go take a look?”
“Okay.”
I wanted to forget everything and see something good, so I agreed. Fortunately, Liston was interested in phantom pain patients, so it was not difficult. Wasn’t he literally creating phantom pain patients? Since he was still cutting every day, I had no choice but to go.
Thwack. Thwack.
There was a lot of cutting.
“Huh…”
“It hurts…”
We passed the amputation ward. Even though I routinely gave them dogwood water mixed with willow bark, I still heard a lot of screaming. It had to be that way. It was an amputation. Even proper aspirin would not fully ease the pain, and this was just water. I gave them only a small dose to avoid overdose, so the effect was weaker.
“It’s quiet now.”
When I came here, I realized how differently people reacted to the same thing. Liston chuckled at the screams. Unlike me, who wanted to fix everything, he saw it as natural. Didn’t he know I would feel much more comfortable?
It would be really comfortable if I had Ultracet or Pethidine…
In twenty-first-century Korea, amputations were rarer, and such prolonged pain was almost unheard of. Even if those drugs were not available, spinal anesthesia could be used. Its effect and safety were incomparable.
“Isn’t it much better than before? Thank you.”
Liston seemed satisfied with the status quo, having known pain his whole life.
“Shall we use some too?”
Blundell was jealous of his son. Since this was natural, I said nothing. Especially since they were not people worth listening to.
“It is much better.”
“Thank you… Teacher.”
“I heard it was a method devised by Dr. Pyeong. Thank you…”
Anyway, the phantom pain ward was peaceful. Mirror therapy was effective, and the patients were on medication, so it had to be. Since they had been there for a long time, their pain was less severe than in the amputation ward. Of course, some still had sharp pain…
I can’t help it now.
I was so accustomed to the nineteenth century that I knew when to give up. Had I gradually understood, both mentally and emotionally, that no matter how hard I tried, I could not change the era’s limitations?
“Whew.”
Feeling better, I headed to the Anatomy Lab. Inside, Joseph, Alfred, and Colin, who had recently joined, were focused on the homework I had assigned.
“I’m not good at this.”
“It’s because it’s rotten. It’s difficult for me too.”
“Me too?”
“No, do you think your hands are rotten?”
“M-Me?”
“Hmm.”
Unexpectedly… the best one was Colin. Aside from his noble pride, once I stopped encouraging him, his skills improved. He had been talented from the start.
He has good hands.
If Joseph is strong and Alfred is zealous, Colin would make a good assistant doctor…
I want to raise this guy as a disciple.
Of course, people with bad hands could still become surgeons. It was too soon to talk about talent yet… but Colin’s was clearly exceptional.
“Well… Didn’t you do it?”
He did not know. Crazy guy. It was as if he was hesitating over something he had only seen once. The task was probably harder than when I did it. The specimen was more rotten. Without an unlimited supply of corpses, learning would have been really hard. I learned that corpses rotted much faster than I thought.
“No, good job. You have talent.”
“Oh…? Why are you talking like that…?”
“I’m always honest. You have talent.”
“Th… Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
Though I was being honest, he seemed hesitant. Considering what he had done to me before, it might have been deserved…
Isn’t it rather unusual in Britain to have children who don’t discriminate at this point?
More people did not see others as different, right? Those with foreign experience or those who had met foreign nobles were better, while the others were not as good. Still, this was actually good.
“Don’t stop. Let’s do more today… a finger. How can this move like this? You can tell through anatomy.”
I patted him on the shoulder and moved my hand. It was nothing special. I simply wriggled my fingers as if playing the piano. Anyone could do that. But when I thought about how this was possible, and how complex a robot would need to be to mimic it, it was a miracle.
“Let’s see how great God’s design is.”
Personally, I was an atheist… but during dissection, I felt some trace of God’s providence. It was so amazing that I wondered if it was natural. Once you learned it, it simply had to be that way.
“Oh…”
“Unbelievable.”
“Hey, Lord.”
Besides, weren’t these guys truly faithful? Naturally, I invoked God.
What will happen to the prisoners fed rotten bread tomorrow?
I thought of them, hoping only that they would stay alive, let alone get better.
Translator’s Notes
Syphilis — A sexually transmitted bacterial infection that progresses in stages. Before antibiotics, mercury and arsenic-based treatments were historically used despite their dangers.
Agar plate — A laboratory dish containing a nutrient gel used to grow and observe microorganisms.
Arsenic compound — Arsenic-based chemicals were historically used in some medical treatments, including early syphilis drugs, but arsenic is highly toxic.
Phantom pain — Pain felt in a missing limb after amputation.
Willow bark — A traditional pain-relieving substance containing salicin, a chemical related to aspirin.
Aspirin — A pain reliever and anti-inflammatory drug derived from salicylate chemistry.
Ultracet — A modern pain medication combining tramadol and acetaminophen.
Pethidine — A synthetic opioid painkiller used for moderate to severe pain.
Spinal anesthesia — A form of regional anesthesia injected near the spinal cord to numb the lower body during procedures.
Mirror therapy — A rehabilitation method using a mirror to visually “restore” the missing limb, often used to reduce phantom limb pain.