Chapter 2088 Sin Sin
Manbao carefully swept the fallen scabs into the bottle, held his breath, covered the bottle, and then said to the girl on the bed, "You've recovered very well. You don't even need to take medicine. You can leave tomorrow."
The little girl was stunned for a moment before she realized what was happening. She said in surprise, "Really? I, I can leave now?"
Manbao nodded.
She turned around and rushed to her mother, crying, "Mom, I'm fine, I'm fine..."
"Yes, yes, you are fine. You are finally fine." The woman pulled the little girl off the bed and knelt down directly in front of Manbao.
Manbao quickly reached out to support her, "Sister-in-law, what are you doing? Please get up quickly."
"Thank you, Doctor Zhou, for saving my life, girl. Come on, kowtow to Doctor Zhou. When you were brought here, the doctors all said you couldn't survive. It was Doctor Zhou who saved you."
The little girl knelt down again, and even though Manbao tried to stop her, she still kowtowed.
Within one day, Manbao sent eight patients out, and all of them were cured and discharged alive.
Some can be cured, and naturally some cannot.
Manbao withdrew his hand and shook his head at the patient's relatives beside him, and then there was crying in the tent.
During this period of time, Manbao has become accustomed to such separations from death.
When she first saw him, she felt uncomfortable and had to stand in the wind for a few minutes to calm down. But after a month, people died and were carried out every day, including other people's patients and hers. The pain became numb.
At this time, Manbao no longer stood in the wind and pretended that the wind was too strong to blind her. She just stood there quietly, watching her relatives cry for a while, and then nodded to Zhou Liru who was waiting on the side.
Zhou Liru went out to call for help, and soon someone came to carry the deceased out. The body needed to be cremated, so they could only take the ashes with them.
This is also one of the reasons why some smallpox patients would rather die than come to the medical tent.
Manbao watched them leave and turned to see the next patient.
When she finally dragged her legs to the place where the medicine was boiled, she had dinner with Zhou Liru and then squatted on the ground.
A doctor came over and asked, "Doctor Zhou, I noticed several patients were discharged from your office this morning. I also saw you sending someone off at the vent. How many beds have been vacated?"
Manbao sighed and said, "Nine, eight survived, and one died."
Seeing that she wasn't very excited, a doctor smiled and said, "Doctor Zhou, you're doing much better than us. It's quite rare that you can cure eight people in one day and only have one die."
"Yes, yes, I went out today and found five people, two of whom died, leaving only three alive."
Manbao said, "But I've been here for quite some time, and all these patients were admitted after I arrived..."
The patients she had been treating when she first came in had either died or had been cured and released long ago, and were now helping out in various places.
Now, all the people living in the medical tent were admitted through her care and she has been taking care of them all the time. She has tried her best to be considerate, but people still die every day.
It was indeed uncomfortable, but what Manbao felt most deeply was the viciousness of the smallpox virus.
The mortality rate was too high, so she could confidently say that her treatment plan was the most comprehensive among all doctors, even better than Doctor Lu.
She used a three-pronged approach of treatment: decoctions, acupuncture, and medicinal scrubbing. She naturally knew that doctors could not guarantee a 100% cure, but with such comprehensive treatment methods, the mortality rate was so high. One can imagine how high the mortality rate was in other people or other places.
What Teacher Mo said was indeed true. This is a very vicious virus with high infectiousness and mortality rate.
Therefore, it is better to prevent it early rather than to bother with treatment after the epidemic occurs.
Manbao was eating while thinking about prevention. She asked the doctor beside her, "Have you heard of vaccination?"
"What?"
Manbao said, "People who have had smallpox will not get it again. If everyone in the world gets smallpox once, won't smallpox be eradicated?"
"… Doctor Zhou, are you trying to infect everyone in the world with smallpox? How many people would survive then?"
Manbao said, "Smallpox can be strong or weak. Haven't you noticed that the pox on children is milder than that on adults? A child may be cured in five days, but an adult may need seven days or even longer."
She said, "None of the adults in my medical ward have been cured within seven days, but there are many children. I've observed the smallpox outbreaks in children, and it's indeed less toxic than that in adults."
"So what if we could control the toxicity of smallpox?" She thought about the vaccination methods she had read about. "What if we could select a less toxic smallpox strain and infect a person or a cow, cure it, and then use its scabs to infect the person or cow with smallpox again? After two or three times, the toxicity would surely be much less. Then, if we could use the scabs to infect a person with smallpox, the smallpox that would come out would be minimally toxic and could be cured with a simple treatment. They wouldn't have a high fever or a rash all over their body, but they would have had smallpox before, so if they were to come out with smallpox again, they wouldn't be infected."
It sounds like a fairy tale, but... miraculously, everyone thinks it makes sense.
So someone asked, "Where did Doctor Zhou hear about this method?"
It's obviously not something that can be thought of now.
Manbao's words lingered on his tongue before he said, "I heard this from a patient. He said there seems to be this method in the Western Regions, but I don't know if it's true or not."
"This time, smallpox seems to have come from the Western Regions."
"No way, isn't it that the cattle and sheep on the grasslands were sick, and they were sold to people in Xiazhou City, and that's how they got infected."
"Really? I heard that the people on the grasslands got sick first and then came to Xiazhou City to infect us Central Plains people?"
As they continued to talk, Manbao quickly said, "Lord Yang will investigate the cause later. Do you think this vaccination method is reliable?"
"You have to try it to know if it's reliable, right?"
"We need to test it on humans," a doctor said. "Doctor Zhou is an official of the imperial court, and he has death row prisoners available. But even death row prisoners can't be used for smallpox tests, right?"
"Yes, this method is against the harmony of nature."
"So we still have to search for it. Find the source of this method and study it after we know the exact method. When the time comes, we will use death row prisoners, and the merits in the future will be able to offset the sins."
Manbao nodded repeatedly, "I think so too, so we have to go to the Western Regions."
The doctors were silent for a long time. After a while, they said, "It's not that simple. The journey is so long..."
Who would be willing to go to the Western Regions?
Manbao is willing!
Seeing that everyone was discussing in a low voice, she nodded with satisfaction, but she still couldn't help but think of the method of vaccination.
The book said that cowpox was safer than human smallpox, probably because it was less toxic. However, it did not mention how many stages of transmission the smallpox had to go through, so the doctors were not wrong. After she found the specific method from the book, she still had to find someone to try it out.
It seems that I am really going to offend the prisoners on death row. What a sin.
See you tomorrow
(End of this chapter)
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