Episode 96: Rabies [2]
“Oh!”
“Brother!”
Still, you could not slaughter a dog inside a hospital, right? Everyone nearby, including me, rushed in to stop him. Only then did Liston realize that this might be a little inappropriate, and he lowered his knife. Of course, the dog was not going to survive either way.
Boom.
As soon as we arrived at Liston’s villa outside London, the knife flew like lightning. I tried pointing out that this was a surgical blade and that we were dealing with a rabid dog, but it was pointless.
“Can’t I just wipe it?”
Technically, he was not wrong. It was not as if we threw away surgical knives after every use. Of course, in modern medicine, disposable blades were used, but the rest of the equipment still had to be disinfected anyway.
“Ugh!”
It was lucky that Liston made the strike. The dog, though small, was surprisingly fat. How had it grown so big in London, where even people struggled to find food? Still, it died in a single blow. No unnecessary pain, even for a rabid dog. That could be considered mercy for both sides.
“Okay, but… how exactly are we going to separate the brain and medulla here?”
Now, the rest was up to me. Liston looked slightly embarrassed, so imagine how I felt as the one who actually had to do it.
Ugh… I really, really don’t want to do this.
They called me a genius in anatomy, but that was only because I had done so much of it. Dog anatomy? What did I know about that? I had never dissected one before. And if I got cut in the middle of this, I could contract rabies. There was no cure for that.
“Haha… Let’s just take a look.”
Maybe I had been pretending to be a Joseon genius for too long, because despite my internal screaming, I still ended up at the dissection table. Why did I keep cursing?
“Looks like we can cut through here.”
Honestly, I could not see a damn thing through the fur. But my mouth kept moving, as if possessed by some ventriloquist spirit.
Slice.
Even though I was grumbling, I put on gloves. Dissecting a rabid dog could actually be my death sentence.
“Hmm.”
Joseph and Alfred, my unwilling assistants, also put on gloves. Their faces did not look thrilled. Since we needed to harvest the dog’s brain and medulla oblongata, they did not really have a choice. I considered warning them about the risk of infection, but… was that really necessary?
No need to make it worse.
Sure, everything here was outdated, but this surgical armor was strangely durable, definitely more rugged than twenty-first-century disposable gear. Microsurgery would have been a nightmare, but I was not trying to save the dog, so it did not matter.
Ssk.
I began dissecting near the back of the dog’s neck with the scalpel I had brought from the hospital, but quickly changed my approach. I remembered a video I once watched about skinning nutria during a pest-control campaign. Apparently, when handling fur-bearing animals, the first step was always to remove the skin. That made sense, so I cut along the side of the spine. Since I was not going to eat the meat, I was not overly concerned, and thanks to my surgical experience, I was not particularly slow.
Slice.
Why? Because the structure of mammals was not dramatically different between species. The basic principles still applied. So I skinned the dog fairly quickly, though still slower than a butcher would, and once again faced the back of its neck.
Crack.
What followed was not worth describing in detail. It involved carefully cutting through bone while preserving the medulla and brain. Despite minor damage in a few areas, I managed to keep the cerebrospinal fluid intact.
“Now… let’s dry it in the sun.”
I placed the extracted tissue on a tray. It would have been great to know exactly what Louis Pasteur did, but my memories were closer to folklore than science. Still, I figured the goal was to weaken the virus with heat and time. How long would it need to dry?
Before decomposition sets in… maybe three days max?
The issue was that French sunlight and London sunlight were not exactly the same. Thankfully, we were on the outskirts, so the thick London smog was not as much of a problem. But the sun was still weak here. If I had a satellite phone, I would ask Elon Musk whether solar panels would even work in the UK. But then again, plants did grow here.
I guess this isn’t the only rabid dog around.
This might actually be easier than growing mold. In Korea, finding a rabid dog would be nearly impossible, but here? Stray dogs were everywhere, and the risk of rabies was sky-high. That thought calmed me slightly.
“Whew…”
With a sigh, I handed the tray to Liston. While I had been bickering with Joseph and Alfred, he was relaxing with a drink. Then, without a word, he hoisted the tray and placed it on the roof in one motion. His height really came in handy.
“But what if it rains?”
“Ah.”
That sound he made was somehow both scary and valid. Rain was definitely a problem. This was Britain, after all.
Moisture… would ruin everything.
It might rot instead of merely weakening the virus. Moisture was the enemy of preservation.
“Well… we can at least pray.”
Unlike my panicked expression, Liston’s face remained calm, maybe because he was drunk, or maybe because he did not expect anything from this experiment. It annoyed me, given all the miracles I had managed to pull off lately.
Rabies remained incurable for a long time.
Even in the twenty-first century, once symptoms appeared, rabies was still fatal. During this time period, getting bitten by a rabid dog was practically a death sentence.
“Yes, we should pray.”
Liston was not the type you could persuade through reason, so I did not press the issue. At this point, prayer was our only option. That was what happened when you lived in a world without electricity, never mind UV sterilizers.
“Drink this. Who would’ve thought syphilis could be cured with moldy bread? I still can’t believe it, even after seeing it with my own eyes.”
“Same.”
Liston looked genuinely astonished. Technically, I was not old enough to drink, but come on. When an adult handed you a drink after you had just dissected a rabid dog, you did not say no. I was exhausted. Mercury poisoning, patients vomiting from moldy bread, all those images were burned into my mind.
Is this trauma?
I was also stressed out over whether it might rain on that poor dog’s brain and spinal cord hanging out on the roof.
“Wow…”
I downed the drink in one gulp and immediately felt like my soul was detaching.
“Why is this guy like this?”
“I know, right? I think he only had one sip.”
While I was busy losing my mind, an entire side conversation unfolded above me.
“I mean this kindly, but you’re not particularly good at anything outside medicine.”
“Yeah, and your pepper is small. You can’t even drink.”
Who said that? Hearing was the last sense to go, even when someone was near death. That was something doctors should know… but apparently, nineteenth-century ones did not.
“But even if it’s small, isn’t it still usable?”
“Yeah, but I saw it…”
“Ugh, you’re not marriage material.”
“No, it’s not that bad…”
“I’m honestly worried about you.”
“Professor…”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Sadly, my memory cut off after that.
When I woke up, Liston was standing there, completely unfazed. Judging by the empty bottles, I must have kept drinking even after I passed out. If he had been born in ancient times, he would have made a hell of a knight.
“Are you awake?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Get your act together. We’re late. Why can’t you handle your liquor?”
“Sorry…”
Even though it was not exactly a crime, I still followed him out in silence. Outside, Joseph and Alfred looked even worse than me.
“Ugh…”
“Wow…”
I had turned into a zombie, but I was not alone. It took real stamina to keep up with Liston. Anyway, we got in the carriage and returned to dear old London. The city was still covered in shit, rats, stray dogs, and smoke… I was describing hell, but if you lived here long enough, you could survive it.
“Aaaaaah!”
Okay, maybe not. As soon as we entered the hospital, I heard a scream. That was not unusual, but this one was different.
“A child…?”
“Yeah. That’s not good.”
It was unmistakably a child’s scream. A girl’s. And oddly, it hit me harder than any adult’s pain ever had. I was not sure why. Maybe because humans were wired to protect the weak. But I started walking toward the sound without thinking.
“Hey, at least let me—”
Standing there was a young girl with a dog bite on her arm, and another girl her age holding a frying pan. It turned out the older sister with the pan was the one screaming. The younger one, the one who had been bitten, did not even make a sound, though her face was twisted in pain.
“With this? This is too big. You need a hot iron. Where’s the dog?”
And yet again, the attending doctor was heating up an iron. And there was the dog, drooling, of course.
“Fuck.”
I swore without meaning to and rushed toward the girl.
Could I cure her? I did not know. But I could not just stand there.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
The first step in treatment was always the same: ask the patient’s name. Especially for children, it could calm them down. A small distraction from the pain.
“Emily Brontë.”
“Emily Brontë…?”
And just like that, I was the one thrown off.
Wuthering Heights…?
Translator’s Notes
Rabies — A viral disease usually transmitted through the saliva or bite of an infected animal. Once symptoms appear, it is almost always fatal without modern preventive treatment.
Medulla oblongata — The lower part of the brainstem that controls vital functions such as breathing and heart rate. Rabies affects the nervous system, so the narrator focuses on the brain and medulla.
Cerebrospinal fluid — Fluid surrounding the brain and spinal cord.
Attenuated vaccine — A vaccine made from a weakened pathogen to stimulate immunity without causing full disease.
UV sterilizer — A modern device that uses ultraviolet light to reduce or kill microorganisms.
Mercury poisoning — Toxicity caused by mercury exposure. The narrator references it because mercury-based treatments were historically used despite their danger.
Wuthering Heights — A novel by Emily Brontë, first published in 1847.