I Became a Plague Doctor in a Romance Fantasy Novel

Whose Corpse Is This (1)

Whose Corpse Is This (1)

Today, the ward was peaceful. Only screams, chaos, destruction, and death ruled the space.

Still, the situation was stabilizing. The flu patients would be sent back as soon as the sun rose. The people injured in the swordsmanship competition would need to stay for another day or two.

No, the person with the leg injury could go home as soon as the plaster cast was made, and the person who had their spleen removed would need to stay a few more days.

“How is the patient’s condition?”

“Just stable. We’re checking to see if there’s any inflammation at the surgical site.”

“There’s none, right?”

Istina nodded. She looked curious about something, though.

“By the way, professor. How did you figure out what diseases the trauma patients had and how to treat them?”

How did I figure it out? You have to know what the disease is to live, is there any other way? Istina tilted her head, and I thought for a moment before speaking.

“It was when I was in university.”

“Yes.”

“The professor was teaching that. You can distinguish the type of snake by the shape of its fangs.”

“Aha. I didn’t know that.”

“So, one of the students in the class said, ‘Do we really need to know how to distinguish snakes if we want to be doctors?’ Something like that.”

“Right.”

“I don’t know either. I can’t distinguish snake types by their fangs or heads, and I can’t identify mushrooms just by their appearance. How can anyone memorize all that?”

But that’s not the important part.

“But. What if you encounter a patient bitten by an unknown snake in your life? You never know, right?”

It could happen, or it might not.

“This is what I’m trying to say.”

“Do we need to know everything?”

The professor who taught me said this:

– You don’t have to know everything.

– But if you don’t, someone might die.

“It’s not your fault if a patient dies, and you can’t memorize every little thing. But if knowing one more thing could save one more person in your life…”

It’s not about being sentimental; it’s the reality. You have to know. If you don’t, you have to find out. There’s no other choice.

“Aha.”

“You have to memorize the diseases you see often or are likely to see. If blood pressure drops after trauma, it’s usually internal bleeding. The cause of internal bleeding is usually a rupture of the liver or spleen. The spleen is located under the left rib. The spleen is an organ that can be removed.”

That was my thought process.

“It’s difficult.”

“It is.”

It can’t be helped. Do what you can.

“Even for me. I didn’t think to make a blood pressure monitor in advance, so I struggled this time because there was no way to find out my blood pressure.”

To be precise, I didn’t think it would be possible to make a blood pressure monitor here. But it’s inconvenient not to have a way to check blood pressure.

“What’s blood pressure?”

“What?”

Istina looked completely clueless. She knew there was no blood pressure monitor, but she didn’t know what blood pressure was.

Wait a minute. Then what theory is being claimed here? What was the theory believed before the principle of blood circulation was properly discovered?

I knew it, but I can’t remember.

Did they think it was made in the heart?

“No, what do you think blood pressure is? It’s the pressure of blood passing through the blood vessels.”

This is another part I missed.

Internal bleeding, blood pressure drop, loss of consciousness due to blood pressure drop. All of these only make sense if you understand the concept of blood ‘circulating’.

Istina, who didn’t know this fact, wouldn’t have understood the internal bleeding, blood pressure drop, and loss of consciousness of the previous patient, or the thought process here at all.

It must have sounded like nonsense throughout the surgery.

After thinking for a long time, I opened my mouth.

“Istina. By any chance, where do you think blood is made and where does it go?”

“Uh, well. Isn’t blood made in the liver and spread throughout the body?”

Ah, I remembered.

Before the discovery of blood circulation, the academic world, following the opinion of Galen, a physician and philosopher of the Roman era, believed that blood spread out and was consumed.

It doesn’t make sense to us, but in fact, people of that era had no way to observe capillaries. It must have looked like the tissue was absorbing blood like a sponge.

It’s not illogical to think that the absorbed blood is consumed.

It’s just that with better equipment, you can find out that it’s not the case. There are various grounds for this. You can calculate the blood flow, observe the capillaries under a microscope…

This is a big deal. The academic world probably hasn’t even recovered from the aftermath of the bacterial hypothesis yet. Even now, if you hold a conference or call a professor, they’ll just want to talk about bacteria all the time. Well, there’s no other way.

I have to inform as many people as possible during undergraduate classes and make the announcement quickly.

Suddenly, I have a lot more to do.

“Let’s go somewhere later.”

“Where?”

Once the condition of my ward patients stabilizes. I think there will be materials needed for the next class.

It’s finally time to bring out ‘that’.

“Let’s finish the ward work quickly and go.”

“Okay.”

The swordsmanship tournament is not important right now.

Once the condition of the two patients currently hospitalized stabilizes. I need to quickly make Estina understand what blood pressure is and create a sphygmomanometer.

Medical research requires corpses.

It’s inevitable. Someone who hasn’t even opened a corpse can’t open a living patient. Isn’t it also a problem to prescribe medicine to treat something you’ve never seen directly?

Corpses are not only used for learning purposes. They are often needed for experiments.

A famous case was when the US military used donated corpses to verify the performance of explosive protection equipment, which made the news.

Anyway.

“Whose corpse is this…?”

“I don’t know either.”

“Where did you get it?”

This is the academy’s underground dungeon.

A corpse was lying on the desk in the underground dungeon. Istina and I, wearing plague doctor masks, looked down at the corpse.

“They were selling it at the execution ground.”

“You can just buy it like that?”

I nodded.

“Why are you so curious? They were selling it, so I bought it. I don’t know much either.”

“Well, isn’t it natural to have a few questions when you hear that corpses are being bought and sold?”

I brought it just in case it might be needed. By the way, it was said to have been under a spell for the past few days.

“It’s not strange, right?”

Honestly, I don’t know if it’s legal. No matter how messed up the imperial law is, isn’t it a bit strange to be able to buy a corpse like you would a mattress?

Did they just sell it because I’m a doctor?

“Anyway, let’s take a look.”

What I brought to the basement were several buckets of water and glass bottles filled with alcohol.

The plan was to take out the organs, preserve them in alcohol, and use them as teaching materials.

The important thing is the structure and function of the organs.

“Let’s open it up.”

I picked up the scalpel. Would it be difficult to have the corpse in the classroom for the next lesson? Should the students come down here?

That seems a bit strange too.

First, let’s focus on teaching and persuading Istina. That’s the important thing.

I picked up the saw.

“Istina, do you know where the heart is?”

“In the middle of the chest.”

“Right. From here to here are the ribs, so let’s cut the ribs with the saw, open it up, and take out the heart. You take the other side, cut gently.”

Istina, despite gagging, started sawing from the collarbone. In the past, at the hospital, they used something similar to metal scissors.

Crack, crack. The sound of ribs breaking.

“Ugh…”

In modern hospitals, it’s not easy to get a cadaver, but here, as long as you pay, it’s relatively simple. That’s good.

The downside is…

The cadavers we saw in modern hospitals were perfectly preserved, but not here. Blood is pooled in various parts inside the body, and tissues like nerves are already decayed or altered, making delicate structures hard to see.

Anyway, the thorax was opened. I finished the work with metal scissors and completely opened the front of the thorax, exposing the lungs and heart.

“Here’s the heart. Take it out.”

Istina took the scalpel, cut the major blood vessels of the heart with it, and carefully took out the heart.

“Now rinse it with water.”

If blood is pooled, it’s hard to observe the structures. Istina silently washed the heart with water. Dark red clots of blood fell away.

“Structure and function. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“How many holes are there?”

“Uh, there are four big holes.”

Yes. Each of them is a hole connected to the aorta, the vena cava, the pulmonary artery, and the pulmonary vein. Although the vena cava is divided into the superior vena cava and the inferior vena cava.

There are indeed four large holes.

The key is this.

The heart is not just a place where blood exits. It is also a place where blood enters. Blood is not consumed; it circulates through the body.

“What can you tell from looking at the heart?”

“Uh, I still don’t really know.”

Istina slowly turned the heart.

“Then. How does it feel?”

“Uh, it’s very firm, right?”

Behind the plague doctor’s mask, Istina’s eyes frowned. It seemed she didn’t quite understand what I was trying to say. Well, let’s take it slow for now.

“Give it here.”

I took the heart from Istina. Let’s see, I should start with the aortic valve.