Chapter 68
Before the sun rose, Heo Jun arrived at the Medical Bureau and grumbled under his breath.
"Why are you so late?"
He scanned the room like a man with something urgent on his mind.
"Ah, I'm sorry, Director. My apologies, Vice Director."
"It's all right, Vice Director. I arrived early, didn't I? Now, quickly, unlock the door for me."
"Of course, Director."
The Medical Bureau's vice director opened the locked lab door, and Heo Jun rushed inside.
Watching him, the vice director shook his head. A look of pure disbelief.
Now that egg production and distribution for the variolation vaccine were handled by the vice director, Heo Jun could focus solely on creating the Bingchobudeosan aspirin as instructed by the King.
"Damn it! I have to pass this first before I can make sulfanilamide and hexane... "
Sulfonamide, which destroyed bacteria to treat infections.
And the extraction solvent, hexane, which could simply dissolve oil without boiling or grinding.
These revolutionary medical breakthroughs were necessities for the people, and Heo Jun wanted to create them as fast as possible.
But the King had refused.
'Unlike herbal medicines, chemical drugs can be mass-produced, but if something goes wrong, they can wipe out entire groups of people. We must build solid foundations from the ground up,' the King had said.
"If that's the case, why not tell me about them instead of withholding?"
Heo Jun grumbled again as he began checking the ventilation system.
'Chemical experiments start with ventilation checks, or you'll end up dead,' the head of the bureau had warned him sternly.
After passing the inspection, Heo Jun took a deep breath for the antipyretic and analgesic he was to create.
"This time, it has to work!"
Heo Jun, with his hair cropped short and beard shaved clean, clenched his fist tightly.
He had once seen his hair and beard under a microscope.
How shocked he had been then.
He summoned every staff member of the Medical Bureau and had them do the same.
Then he shaved his own hair and beard.
He also bathed his entire body with the soap sent from the bureau.
He boiled and washed his clothes and tools.
He ordered the same for the staff.
If they didn't want to, they could leave the Medical Bureau.
No one left.
They were all shocked by the microscope images of the microscopic organisms, just like him.
The news spread rapidly through the Medical Bureau and soon reached the royal palace.
For a while, there was chaos as people scrambled to obtain soap.
Even after Heo Jun explained that simply washing with clean water would kill those weird organisms.
Gradually, more people began cropping their hair and shaving their beards.
The Medical Bureau staff had drawn the images, and the sight was scarier than the ghosts said to dwell in the underworld.
Fortunately, no one whispered about 'body hair and nails must be cut' as a superstition.
Since Heo Jun had pioneered the vaccine that prevented smallpox—more deadly than smallpox itself—he had set the example by shaving first.
No one refused to cut their toenails or fingernails.
And no one dared leave even a single hair on their topknots.
Instead, a new profession emerged: barbers who provided stylish haircuts.
Hearing this, Yi Yeon immediately ordered the production of scissors.
Small, lightweight models that even women could use.
Also, a small razor for shaving beards and a whetstone to sharpen the blades.
He instructed them to be made in large quantities.
Then he named them barbers and had the Joseon Bank provide loans for purchasing scissors and razors.
They were sold for 500 won—less than the price of two sacks of rice.
But for the barbers, it was a fortune.
Soon after, shops with signs reading "Barber" appeared across the kingdom.
Primarily near wells where clean water was available, to promote hygiene.
Heo Jun stood before the large triangular boiler, muttering.
"Why isn't it working?"
He had made countless batches of Bingchobudeosan and sent them to the King.
But every time, they were rejected.
Too many impurities.
'The method His Majesty taught me isn't that complicated, is it?'
He knew that drinking water infused with willow branches would lower fever and ease pain.
But he had only guessed at the reason from herbal medicine knowledge.
The King had said there was a special substance in the willow branches.
'Salicylic acid, he called it.'
So he had tried to extract it.
The method the King gave was incredibly simple.
But the King had refused.
Unknown impurities and concentration might make it fatal to humans.
He had to follow the King's instructions exactly and make acetic acid first.
'Infuse ethanol sent from the bureau with acetic acid bacteria and ferment it to obtain acetic acid,' the King had said.
Concentrated acetic acid solidified at even slight cooling, so it was called glacial acetic acid, with "ice" added to the character.
Mixing the bird acid and glacial acetic acid, then boiling them would create acetylsalicylic acid.
A tiny amount of sulfuric or phosphoric acid to catalyze the reaction.
But something wasn't working.
He started over from the beginning.
First, Heo Jun selected fresh willow branches.
While cutting them, a distinctive bitter-sweet aroma spread.
'This scent is the sign of medicinal efficacy.'
He continued muttering as he placed the finely chopped branches in the triangular boiler, lit the alcohol lamp, and carefully adjusted the flame.
'Medicine depends on sincerity. Sincerity means controlling the fire.'
After heating for about thirty minutes.
He slowly poured the infused water through the newly made fine linen cloth to filter out impurities.
'Too coarse and impurities mix in. Too fine and the medicine is filtered out.'
The result was a liquid that smelled intensely aromatic.
'Now mix in the glacial acetic acid.'
Heo Jun carefully scooped the prepared acetic acid onto the scale.
'The efficacy of medicine comes from precise ratios. You must follow His Majesty's instructions exactly.'
This time, he used the scale sent from the bureau to measure accurately.
The flame was adjusted using the thermometer sent from the bureau.
Previously he had used the sensation in the fingertips to boil herbal medicines, but now he controlled it at 80 degrees Celsius for ten minutes.
Then he placed the entire triangular boiler into ice water to cool completely.
Until crystals formed.
Heo Jun watched the crystallization process with a tense expression and shouted like a boy.
'Come out, come out, Bingchobudeosan!'
Finally, the reaction completed.
When white crystals appeared, Heo Jun smiled brightly.
The crystals looked completely different from before.
He filtered them using the fertilizer paper sent from the bureau and placed them under the microscope.
Then he adjusted the reflectors to gather the incoming light, fine-tuned the focus.
'Perfect!'
It was the cleanest and purest sample he had ever made.
But worry remained.
The King would decide if it passed.
'Please, let it be good...'
The day was already waning.
The experiment that started in the morning had finally ended.
'Time is running out...'
There were too many things he wanted to make, but time flew by mercilessly.
He couldn't stay up all night experimenting.
Experiments in the dark could cause major accidents, and the King had ordered the lab door locked at sunset.
"Damn it!"
Heo Jun muttered as he carried the precious book containing the reaction principle of the Bingchobudeosan sent by the King and left the laboratory.
* * *
* * *
Yi Yeon, who had greeted his mother in the morning and come out to the courtyard, sighed.
"He must be nineteen already!"
'Even by the old calendar, he's over eighteen...'
That was why his mother had brought up the marriage topic.
It had been over two years since the late king passed, so it should be fine.
It had also been over two years since he ascended the throne.
And he had a reliable candidate.
Thinking about it, in the autumn of this year the late king had married.
A virtuous queen with a good character, Queen Park.
'He said there were no children.'
The late king had fifteen sons and nine daughters, so there must have been issues with her.
He had simply said he knew and left.
No need to worry.
"The real problem is next..."
A string of crazy fools.
Except for Gwanghae, he didn't want to see any of them.
But Gwanghae probably couldn't be avoided either.
It seemed Imhae was the first to be born.
He had known the history through the figures of the past.
He couldn't ignore it.
Just thinking about it gave him chills.
He had decided that any fool who caused trouble would be sent to the mines and killed if they kept causing chaos.
"But how easy is that..."
For the second marriage, he decided to avoid anyone with the Kim family name.
He didn't remember the name, but he knew that children of Kim family concubines had caused accidents.
He had spent a full three months on Ganghwado Island.
At Yi I's earnest request.
Each time Yi I asked for one piece of knowledge, he bombarded him with endless questions.
But he never asked how he knew it.
The answer was always predetermined.
Yet he had often felt uneasy when Yi I dug into the very roots of the questions.
'What do I know to ask about that? Damn it!'
Most of the electrical knowledge he had was from his middle school science teacher.
The things he had seen on YouTube were either nonsense or advanced technology he had no hope of creating.
Yet Yi I insisted he would build a generator using a steam turbine.
Right now.
'Your Majesty! If there is such a thing as electricity, it can illuminate pitch-black nights like broad daylight, correct?'
'Your Majesty! If there is such a thing as electricity, it can make aluminum, lighter and tougher than iron?'
'Your Majesty! If there is such a thing as electricity, it can produce fertilizers that make rice grow like weeds?'
'Your Majesty! If there is such a thing as electricity, it can produce gunpowder in infinite quantities?'
'And it cannot fail to melt anything?'
He had been trying to spark Yi I's interest in electricity.
But it had caught him in the ankle.
Most of the news from the court was about where the overflowing sewage had been dumped.
The news from Inspector General Sim Ui-gyeom was to approve the execution of the corrupt who were being sent to the mines.
And the unexpected news was that Kim Seong-il, the envoy to Tsushima, had taken the successor of the Daimyo as a hostage.
So he had decided to grant the request.
It had to be done eventually anyway.
And now seemed like the perfect opportunity.
The only thing he worried about was Yi I's health.
He had said his body had become muscular, but overdoing it could kill.
So he had made him promise to rest when the sun set.
Yi I had accepted reluctantly.
Otherwise he would have left immediately.
When he said they needed to pull copper wire, Yi I led the artisans and created a copper extruder in ten days.
Modifying the one made for producing drainage pipes.
When he said they needed magnets, Yi I declared they would make them from magnetite.
So Yi Yeon taught him the method of creating ferrite magnets.
By mixing iron oxide with cobalt, manganese, and nickel, they could make much stronger magnets than those from magnetite.
There was plenty of manganese.
And the cobalt and nickel, which came with zinc as byproducts from mining copper and lead, had already been refined.
Fortunately, he had made magnets in middle school science experiments, so it wasn't difficult.
Except for the part about baking the powdered mixture at high temperatures above 1,200 degrees Celsius.
After firing, they compressed and solidified the ferrite magnets.
But the magnetization process required a month.
"In the end, I made batteries."
Magnets made from magnetite were too weak to be magnetized by ferrite magnets.
So he decided to make electromagnets.
To make electromagnets, they needed electricity, so they had to make batteries.
'You said that if you soak this lead in hydrogen peroxide, it becomes lead dioxide, and if you immerse lead dioxide and regular lead in dilute sulfuric acid, electricity is produced, right?'
'Correct. About two volts per cell, so we need five cells. That way we can make ten volts.'
'Ah, like connecting the positive pole of a storage battery?'
'Exactly. That's called series connection, and the higher the voltage, the stronger the electricity.'
They connected the lead batteries to a steel rod wrapped with copper wire to make a strong electromagnet.
Using that electromagnet, they magnetized the ferrite magnets into powerful permanent magnets.
'Truly amazing, Your Majesty. With electricity, we can make magnets. It's incredible.'
'You said we could make electricity with magnets, didn't you?'
'Ah, yes. That's a generator, you said. I was so surprised I forgot for a moment.'
In the process, they spent another fifteen days.
Using permanent magnets, they began serious generator production.
But the steam engine Yi I had built was too powerful, so the first generator couldn't withstand the overvoltage and was destroyed.
So they connected large and small gears to adjust the generator's rotational speed.
Only then were they able to make a working DC generator that didn't burn out.
They also created a voltmeter based on the lead battery.
'Your Majesty, truly amazing. When we wind copper wire like a pig's tail, the needle moves according to the voltage's strength. It's incredible.'
'Like generators, when current flows through the wound copper, a magnetic field forms.'
'Current? What is that, Your Majesty?'
Because of Yi I's curiosity, he had no choice but to explain Ohm's Law.
After explaining that, he had to explain Fleming's left-hand rule for the right-hand rule.
'When you multiply current by resistance, you get voltage. If you subtract resistance from voltage, you can measure current, right?'
'Correct. Also, electricity is extremely dangerous, so don't raise the voltage above 100 volts. Look for ways to increase current instead. That way we can produce more electricity.'
'I understand, Your Majesty.'
But he still couldn't relax.
Electrocution could cause instant death.
So he demonstrated just how dangerous electricity was.
'High voltage can electrocute and kill a person. But even low voltage can do this if a high current flows.'
Yi Yeon simply touched the two steel rods connected by the copper wire together.
*Crash!*
"Aaaah!"
Everyone watching, including Yi I, screamed in shock.
But Yi I's expression gradually changed.
As if he had understood something.
Terrifyingly so.
Then he asked.
'Your Majesty, do you think we can connect iron with this?'
* * *