I Became a Plague Doctor in a Romance Fantasy Novel

Episode 66. Fleming, Alexander Fleming (1)

Episode 66. Fleming, Alexander Fleming (1)

The bag of cookies Istina brought back was left on one side of the lab. Istina, with a cookie in her mouth, followed me.

“Where are you going now?”

“The storage. I’m going to show you something important.”

This is the academy’s underground storage.

Istina and I stopped in front of the storage door. A steel door locked tight.

“Eat your cookie quickly and clean up. We have to wear masks to go in this storage…”

“Is it dangerous?”

“No. Just a lot of dust.”

And some mold spores floating around inside. We put on our plague doctor masks as usual-

*Kreeeak*, the storage door opened. Inside the storage, bread was piled up.

It was bread I’d gathered to grow blue mold. The conditions were right; instead of just rotting, the blue mold had grown successfully!

Of course, it’s just blue mold for now. I had no way of knowing which strain had sterilizing properties, not here. Gotta confirm it to know.

“Cough, someone’s got a mountain of bread here.”

“I put it there.”

It’d take weeks for the blue mold to really grow. That bread’s been there a long time, really. I’d half forgotten about it myself.

It’s grown quite a bit now.

Now, I just need to somehow find the sterilizing strain among the blue mold I’ve grown.

“It’s all gone bad. You should’ve said something.”

“Istina. What color is this mold?”

“I dunno. Green?”

“No, it’s blue.”

Istina examined the mold strains.

“Somewhere in this warehouse, a blue mold strain that produces penicillin is growing.”

“How do we find it?”

“Simple. We grow each one in petri dishes with bacteria. If the bacteria doesn’t grow in a petri dish, that’s our golden goose.”

Istina made a small sound of admiration.

“I see! If we check each one individually, we’ll definitely find it – ah.”

Istina stopped abruptly, as if she’d realized something. Well, I feel a bit bad, but since I did all the growing of the blue mold, couldn’t Istina do the searching?

“Right. If we grow each of the blue molds individually, we can find the strain with the qualities we want, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good luck, Doctor Istina.”

“Yeah…”

Istina let out a soft sigh. Still, maybe this work could be done in a week? She’d cultivated so much of the blue mold strain after all.

Anyway, that was her immediate goal.

To find a blue mold strain that produced antibacterial substances. That would be the first step in the discovery and use of penicillin.

It was the same thing she always said when submitting papers, but this time, it really would be research that changed the world. It had in my world, too.

Just you wait, Fleming-sunbae. I will bring penicillin to this world.

Leaving the lab to Istina, I headed towards the ward. I needed to see if Eleanor was doing okay, and when she might be discharged.

Here was the ward.

Not long ago, a knight named Eleanor had been admitted here. She’d been struck by a monster, and we’d treated her traumatic cardiac tamponade.

We hadn’t yet found a way to stop the internal bleeding in the pericardium, so I’d been worried. But, contrary to my concerns, Eleanor was fine.

“Hello, patient.”

“Yes.”

“Have you eaten?”

Eleanor nodded.

“Is there still pain in your chest, or are you having any heart palpitations?”

“No. I feel fine now.”

“No fever?”

“Yeah, there hasn’t been anything like that.”

No sign of sepsis, then. We’d have to be conservative and wait a few more days though.

“So, um, I didn’t have a chance to think about it yesterday, but… can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You really opened up my heart?”

“I did open the membrane surrounding your heart, yes.”

“Is that a normal procedure?”

Not in this world, it isn’t.

In the Middle Ages, and even the early modern period, a good number of doctors believed that thoracic and abdominal surgery would be forever impossible or impractical.

Even if it were possible, they thought it would be incredibly painful, difficult, and have a high chance of failure.

And for the most part, they were right. Until the discovery of anesthesia and surgical hygiene methods.

For that reason, heart surgery only really began to be used in earnest in the 20th century.

And Elenore, what if the pericardiocentesis hadn’t restored your vitals? I might’ve had to do a thoracotomy to find some unknown vascular injury. I might’ve had to let you die.

“It’s not common.”

“Whew… I’m so glad I came to you, Doctor. If I’d gone to someone else, I might’ve died, given my condition when I arrived?”

Because a physically compressed heart isn’t something that can be fixed with medicine or magic. If you’d gone to another healer, you probably would’ve died that day.

I nodded.

“Oh. You’ve saved the lives of so many people in the Knight Academy, right? There was that one guy with a broken arm, and that other guy who had part of his liver removed, and the one with his leg bandaged up.”

“Yeah, it seems so.”

So stop getting hurt already, you b*stards.

What are you guys doing in your daily lives that you’re always getting wheeled into the hospital half-dead?

“Looking at your condition, I think you can be discharged tomorrow. Come straight to the hospital if you feel pain, and be sure to take your medicine.”

Eleanor nodded, her expression brightening. Still, it’s a relief the procedure was a success.

Knock knock knock.

Istina opened the lab door at the sound of the knocks. A person who looked like a junior was standing on the other side of the lab door.

Could it be a new grad student?

Istina tried hard to suppress the smile that was about to spread across her face. What if she sensed something weird and ran away, that would be a problem.

“Oh my, you must be my junior. Come in.”

“I’m Amy…!”

“Come in and have a seat.”

Istina left the door wide open.

Amy sat in front of the sofa in the lab with a reluctant look. Hands intact, legs intact, eyes intact. She passes muster.

“Our lab is great.”

“Ah, yes.”

“We produce a lot of research, and the professor is kind and explains things well.”

“Wow, that’s a relief.”

Amy nodded, seemingly relieved. Istina smiled meaningfully.

“What do you usually do in the lab?”

“What we do is one of three things. See patients in the ward, participate in research, or attend or assist in classes.”

“Oh, that sounds fun.”

“Fun… it is fun, isn’t it.”

To an outsider, it might look interesting. Istina, now used to it, and exhausted, found it hard to feel any amusement.

“What kind of research are you doing these days?”

“Ah.”

Istina, to be honest, didn’t really know what the research was about either. Something about growing mold to extract a substance that kills bacteria.

“They’re growing mold, trying to find a cure-all that kills bacteria from it.”

“Is that possible? That’s amazing.”

“Yeah.”

Amy’s reaction was so exaggerated that Istina’s shoulders naturally went up. Whether it was actually possible, Istina didn’t know either.

“Well then. We were just about to start penicillin research today, actually? Since you’re here, Amy, how about you help? I’ll pay you the graduate student rate.”

Amy nodded.

Three hours later.

The work, when you broke it down, was simple. Extract blue mold from the bread stacked in the warehouse and inoculate the center of a bacterial culture medium.

The problem was, you had no idea which bread mold would produce any results. And in the warehouse, there were literally hundreds, if not thousands, of fist-sized loaves stacked up.

“581st…”

“582nd…”

“583rd…”

Istina glared at the hundreds of petri dishes piling up on the lab bench. It might not take as long as she thought.

Maybe it’d be finished today.

Exhaustion was inevitable, but at least the work wasn’t difficult, a stroke of luck in the midst of it all.

“Is… is it always like this?”

“No. It’s because this is the research I’m doing this time.”

“I see.”

“A few days ago, I saw the injured from the monster hunt festival. One person is still hospitalized, that person had heart surgery.”

“They do heart surgery?”

“My professor does, at least. To be precise, it wasn’t fixing the heart itself, but rather an incision of the pericardium surrounding it, but still.”

That seemed strange even to Istina.

It was a bizarre thing.

Even now, some in academia were still fighting over the principles and process of blood circulation.

“How many petri dishes are left?”

“Let’s fill just one thousand.”

Just about an hour more of work should do it.

The results of the culture would come out in two days. The professor said that about one out of 200 blue molds would produce a substance that kills bacteria.

“The 678th…….”

“The 679th…….”

“The 680th…….”

There wasn’t a particular basis for it, but Istina decided to trust those words for now. Professor Asterix had never been wrong so far.

It would be a long and arduous task.