I Became a Plague Doctor in a Romance Fantasy Novel

Ep. 78. Goldfish (1)

Ep. 78. Goldfish (1)

It was a bit rough, but rounding in the ward is wrapping up pretty well. Amy put the medical records back into the brown envelope.

“What are your impressions from seeing the patients?”

“It’s still difficult. Professor, can you tell what disease they have just by looking at their faces?”

Well.

Sir Arthur, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes series, was a doctor. It’s said that he was inspired by the process of observing patients and deducing information about them, and used that to develop Sherlock’s deduction process.

Of course, in modern times, we don’t need to go that far. Testing has advanced, so we don’t have to rely solely on an observer’s flashes of inspiration to make diagnoses. But the situation is different now.

“Reasoning is important, though. Take Mr. Josef from earlier, for example. We could tell he was someone who handles soil from his nails. And the fact that there’s still soil under his nails means he was doing it recently. What’s a disease you can get from outdoor activities like handling soil in the fall? Ticks.”

Amy nodded, her expression slightly subdued. Was the explanation too complex?

“I see…”

“It’s okay to ask, though.”

Still, trying to acquire as much information as possible is a good thing. Not all patients are kind enough to answer, and there are many patients who don’t tell you things because they don’t know what’s important.

There are also patients who are often unconscious.

“So. You, Professor, you had an idea of what kind of illness Josef had even before seeing him? Even what symptoms to watch out for?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing’s easy, huh…”

“You’ll figure it out as you study. For now, what you can learn from this patient is that the kinds of patients we see are different depending on the season. And that late summer is tick season.”

“Yep.”

Amy nodded.

“I’ll give you the medication. If you find a tick or tick bite on Josef later, tell him to take two of these a day.”

“Whoa, got it. What if we don’t find any?”

“Give it to him anyway.”

I should get back to the lab. There’s bound to be a pile of letters stacked up because of the Whitby conference.

I’ve heard that early modern scholars used to exchange letters often, but honestly.

I didn’t expect them to come in like this, like a bunch of malicious fan mail. I wonder if big shots like Pasteur or Lister had similar experiences?

Probably worse.

Anyway. I saw a few backlogged patients. I headed back to the lab with lighter steps. Istina was in the lab, clutching her head.

“What are you doing?”

“The antibiotic purification process.”

“Is it hard?”

“Is there even a way to do this?”

Well. I’ve been pondering it for the last few days, whether we can succeed through alchemy or not. A way to purify penicillin.

I’d come up with my own answer, but I wasn’t sure if Istina, or maybe Luciana, could’ve come up with some kind of answer too.

“Professor.”

“Yeah.”

“Even if we strain the blue mold culture through a sieve, the medicinal components should still pass through, right?”

“I guess so.”

It depends on the size of the sieve. If we use something like activated carbon or a cloth filter, the high-molecular-weight penicillin could just get adsorbed. The holes have to be visible to the eye.

Or maybe not? Since it’s water-soluble anyway, maybe filtering with cloth is okay.

“We can’t boil it, right?”

“Boiling would decompose all the penicillin.”

There’s definitely a way. Even if it’s not barium, there has to be a way in this world to precipitate or create sediment from penicillin. Let’s give it a try.

I looked at the vials of chemicals Istina had gotten from somewhere. The only way is to test them one by one. First, what should I do?

I need acetic acid. The distinct feature of acetic acid is a sour smell, and in the case of phenylacetic acid, it has a sweet smell too…

So that’s why chemists tasted things. Now that I’m in a situation where I need to distinguish chemicals and identify their properties, I’m even thinking about tasting them myself.

No wonder Newton had fifteen times the normal amount of arsenic in his hair. I didn’t want to eat it myself, so I looked at Istina.

“Istina, out of these vials, which one has a sweet vinegar smell?”

“They say chemists die young.”

“Hmm….”

Istina very carefully picked up one of the vials and sniffed it.

“Isn’t it this one?”

“Let me see.”

I sniffed the medicine Istina gave me. It definitely had a sweet smell.

“What is this?”

“They said it’s refined acetic acid.”

“Good.”

I racked my brain with my lacking chemistry knowledge.

My plan was something like this:

Make a buffer solution with acetic acid, then add ammonium sulfate to stabilize the acidity in a slightly acidic state. If I mix it well in this state, ammonium-penicillin precipitate might form.

Maybe. I don’t know. Gotta try it first.

“Got the sulfuric acid?”

“Yes.”

“Ammonium?”

“Ah, this is it. The really unpleasant smelling stuff that gets mixed in as fertilizer.”

“Give it here.”

At least this one had “sulfur fertilizer” honestly written on the bottle. Saved me some trouble. It’s hard to tell if there’s ammonium just from the smell, but it seems likely.

Ammonium is what they use in fertilizer, after all. I did wonder if it was used as fertilizer just because it smells like shit, though…

Haa.

It’s unnerving sitting here sniffing chemicals like a madman, but they haven’t written down any molecular formulas, have they? There’s no other way, is there?

“Let’s mix it now.”

Istina nodded, then looked at me as if she was worried about something.

“But… how do we evaluate how we’re mixing it? It seems hard to decide on the quantities.”

“No, that’s not right. We’ll make a buffer solution with acetic acid and slowly introduce ammonium sulfate. That way, we can control the change in acidity.”

“If that’s the case, why did we even entrust this to the Alchemy Department? It seems like you know it far better, professor.”

I took the largest glass beaker from the lab and filled it with water.

“Just watch.”

“What are you planning to do with that?”

Like I said. I had thought a lot about it. The pH we need is around 6 to 5. But in this era, there isn’t a device to accurately measure pH. We don’t even have yellow litmus paper.

In my limited knowledge, there’s only one solution.

I took out a fishbowl from behind the desk. There was a small goldfish inside.

“It’ll be a noble sacrifice.”

“No way.”

Isn’t it the most perfect and simple acid-base indicator? I’m going to slowly add acetic acid and acetic acid powder to the water with the goldfish.

“Look. We’ll slowly add acidic powder. The moment the goldfish dies will be the moment we have to stop the dosage.”

The goldfish will die the moment the solution’s acidity deviates from the neutral range. Then, we can consider that we successfully created a slightly acidic solution. We just need to add penicillin to it then.

“That’s horrible.”

“We often do animal experiments, don’t we?”

Istina stared at me with an absurd look. Maybe even a look of pity.

“The fact that you thought of a goldfish as a tool to measure the solution’s properties is just… horrible.”

“There’s no other way.”

Well. It’s the sacrifice of the few for the many.

We put the goldfish in the buffer solution we had made. It didn’t die right away. I slowly, drop by drop, added the ammonium sulfate solution to the glass beaker where the goldfish was.

And then. Goldfish death. Istina, with a gloved hand, scooped the floating goldfish out.

I stopped the ammonium sulfate and added the pre-filtered blue mold culture. After a few minutes. White precipitate gathered at the bottom of the beaker.

“Wow… I’m just speechless.”

“Right? It’s incredibly fascinating.”

“Is the white powder at the bottom of the beaker penicillin? Could we make medicine with that?”

I nodded.

The stuff at the bottom of the beaker, that would be penicillin. Penicillin has a large molecular weight, so the precipitate would settle quickly and be visible. I’m not a chemistry major, so I don’t know that far.

“What do you think?”

“Professor. But… even if I went anywhere to explain this, I don’t think anyone could understand and follow this process.”

“Why? You understood it.”

“What I understand is that we got the medicine with a spell that offered a goldfish as a sacrifice. Am I right?”

That can’t be right.

“No. The moment the goldfish dies, that’s the moment the acetate buffer changes from a neutral to a slightly acidic solution. That’s why we put the goldfish in and administered the ammonium sulfate.”

“So. Isn’t that black magic?”

I sighed.

It seems it won’t go as planned. Istina isn’t stupid, but even if entrusted to people of this era… maybe the day penicillin is mass-produced won’t come.

I might have to reconsider the plan.

“Anyway, I’ve proven it’s possible.”

“Yes.”

Istina nodded. Her eyes were on the goldfish corpse discarded on one side of the workbench. Istina’s gaze had a slight reverence. A look of seeing something incomprehensible.

“Still, it’s pretty wild! Let’s extract that thing first, and see if it can be used for medicine.”

Yeah, right.

Istina turned away from the dead goldfish, grabbed a dropper, and went back to the workbench.