Chapter 13: Jade Rabbit defeats his opponent. Let’s go on vacation to the hot spring town together...
"Best of three?" Alice agreed. "Of course."
Before she could ask, Mr. Chabs himself couldn't wait to interrupt: "Since we each invited a patient for the first two rounds, how about leaving this third round entirely to God?"
"What is God's will?" After living in England for eighteen years, what Alice could not understand the most was that everything could be related to the old man. The old man was so busy!
"Let everyone here sign up themselves. Whoever grabs this opportunity will get it, and it will be up to him to decide who will receive treatment first. This way we can all get fairness." Mr. Chabs spoke in a dignified manner with his head held high.
Alice glanced at him lightly, then casually glanced at the crowd and smiled.
To demonstrate what he called fairness, Mr. Chabs asked Mrs. Finsbury, who was now able to speak normally, to give the opening instructions.
As soon as the command was issued, two voices were heard louder and faster, drowning out the others: "Me, me, me! 'Here!'"
"More than one patient was selected at the same time?" Alice pretended to be confused and asked the question that everyone was concerned about.
She could clearly hear a voice shouting at almost the same time as the two of them, but the voice was hoarse and was immediately drowned out.
"No, no, no, I got this spot for my brother. He has a persistent cough and I hope you two can help him." The one with the louder voice among the two sighed with regret.
In London's winter, there are always people with colds and coughs. At this time, coughs were heard one after another in the crowd.
The person in question squeezed to the front of the crowd, coughed a few times, and quickly replied: "Yes, that's right, I have been coughing for a month." His voice was obviously lower and hoarse than that of his companions.
"Then which one do you want to see first?" Alice already had the answer in her mind and looked at him with a smile.
"Just... let this doctor treat us." He pointed at Mr. Chabs and said, "I heard that he is a member of the Royal College of Physicians. I trust his medical skills." As he spoke, his voice became smaller and smaller under Alice's smiling gaze.
Mr. Chabs didn't notice it, but just raised his chin slightly, as if ready to accept everyone's praise.
Alice still had a ladylike smile on her face, with only a hint of mockery and amusement visible at the corners of her mouth.
Let’s see how long this play will end.
Glancing at the crowd, I saw a pair of light blond hair standing out in the corner, and a pair of deep blue eyes that seemed to contain some emotion.
She smiled at the man, turned and went into the compartment to prepare the medicine for the third round of fighting.
Half a pound of bupleurum, three ounces each of scutellaria, dried ginger and licorice, and two ounces of cinnamon twigs... Alice put these herbs into a ceramic pot and used the mugwort spirit liquid as usual to refine them and enhance their medicinal properties.
After everything was done, he asked Anne to pour about four pints of water into the pot and verbally instructed her on how to boil the Chinese medicine while he played with his pocket watch.[1]
Reed checked that Anne had only poured in water and only did some rough work, so he didn't say anything. After all, Mr. Chabs next door basically wrote out a prescription and then asked the apprentice he brought with him to make the medicine according to the prescription.
Alice turned the crown of her pocket watch and listened to the whispered "plot" next door.
Fun, fun, interesting, interesting. The rich variety of mortals always amazes the monsters.
She didn't mind continuing to play with them. Alice snapped the cover of her pocket watch down.
However, such unpleasant humans must of course be punished.
Alice stood up, told Annie to continue making the medicine, and followed the potion that had already been made next door to go outside the screen to watch the fun.
Mr. Chabs confidently handed the medicine in his hand to the patient who was coughing incessantly at the front of the group.
The patient eagerly took the medicine and gulped it down.
At first he coughed a few times, but after three to five minutes, he miraculously stopped coughing.
He cheered happily twice: "Dr. Chabs is really a great doctor. I don't cough anymore." But his voice was still muffled, as if he was suppressing something.
Everyone's eyes were focused on the patient's changes, and no one noticed that Alice covered her lips with her hand and gently blew out a wisp of demonic air.
Invisible to the mortal eye, it slowly floated towards the patient who was cheering for the Royal College of Physicians and wrapped itself around his neck.
The little magic power she had recovered now couldn't do much, but it was still easy to use the demonic energy to draw out the breath that someone was holding.
"Cough cough - cough cough cough." The patient, who seemed fine just now, could not hold it in any longer and his face turned red from coughing.
Mr. Chabs, who witnessed this scene, was so excited that he cursed under his breath: "Useless thing!"
It turned out that Mr. Chabs had started planning as early as after Alice won the first game.
Not only did he let Reed put useless potions to hint that he should go back to the pharmacy to find a patient he was best at treating, but he also "conspired" with his apprentice to find someone to blend into the crowd and become the third patient when dispensing the medicine, and passed the information to the executor Reed through the apprentice.
Alice heard all of this, and the seemingly perfect plan turned into a joke.
The onlookers were not fools. They realized what was going on when they saw the person who claimed to have been cured suddenly coughing uncontrollably and the highly praised miracle doctor looking extremely unhappy.
There was a sudden burst of booing at the scene.
Mr. Chabs was very flustered and tried to argue that it had nothing to do with him and that he was not aware of it.
Unfortunately, no one believed it.
Mrs. Finsbury, who had always been regarded as the judge of this fight, said calmly, "Mr. Chabs, this is meaningless. If you admit it now, you can still maintain your gentlemanly demeanor."
The shill kept coughing.
At this time, Anne came out from behind the screen and whispered to her employer that the medicine was ready and asked her what to do with it.
Alice asked her to serve a bowl and invited the real passerby patient who was suppressed by the loud-voiced group to come over and drink the medicine.
From the beginning, her medicine was not prescribed for Tuoer, but for the patient with typhoid fever and cough.
The lady who was called looked delighted and gratefully accepted the medicine.
While waiting for the medicine to take effect for about ten minutes, Alice asked Anne to hand Mrs. Finsbury's personal maid a medicine jar containing the decoction she had made when she first made the powder for the ointment.
"Mrs. Finsbury, the previous emergency treatment was mainly to relieve your pain. If you want to cure your tooth disease, you must take this decoction again." Alice explained the purpose and dosage of the decoction. What she didn't explain was that this decoction can gradually repair the Countess's damaged dentin and dental nerves without the need for surgical dentistry to fill or replace them.
She just said that if she took the medicine for another five to seven days, the disease would be cured.
The shelf life of the medicine is greatly extended in winter, not to mention that there is a small amount of spiritual liquid in it, so it can be drunk for seven days without any problem.
Typhoid patients whose coughs had almost stopped also received a can of medicine.
"Eh..." Chabs watched Alice "practicing medicine without a license" again after leaving the competition, and he was speechless.
"Did Mr. Chabs have anything to say?" Alice asked knowingly.
"Nothing." Mr. Chabs looked at Mrs. Finsbury's expression, thought about his current situation, and wisely kept his mouth shut.
"Mr. Reed seems to be trying to make some comments," Alice asked loudly, stopping the ghost who was about to slip away. Apothecary Reed, who had been hiding from the fight, was suddenly exposed to the public. The onlookers suddenly realized that he was facilitating Mr. Chabs's affairs. It was obvious that he had manipulated the patients in the second and third rounds. A whisper broke out, and everyone said they would no longer buy medicine from Reed's pharmacy. Who knew what tricks he was using to deceive people.
Under the mocking or contemptuous gazes of the people around him, Reed repeatedly denied and retreated, pushing through the crowd and running away.
Mr. Chabs left in disgrace amidst the boos from the crowd.
After accepting the medicine, Mrs. Finsbury announced that Alice had won the best-of-three medical competition.
At this time, the blond figure had disappeared from the crowd.
The crowd gradually dispersed. Mrs. Finsbury asked Alice how much she would charge for the consultation, as if she had great confidence in the medicine she prescribed and was sure that her tooth would be healed in a week.
Alice: "Madam, I don't have any special request. It's just that Mr. Chabs's medical skills are not very good and his character is poor. I'm afraid he is not capable enough to treat ladies from the upper class." She shook her head as she spoke, looking very regretful.
Mrs. Finsbury, who had been in high society for years and was considered a shrewd person, immediately understood the hint: "Miss Alice, do you have any suggestions?"
"I've heard a lot about entering the pharmaceutical industry. I heard that members of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom all practice medicine themselves while supporting pharmacies. Since they're already in the medical market, fair oversight has become a mere formality and a joke," Alice suggested. "Why not establish an independent and impartial oversight body, with its personnel solely responsible for oversight? Of course, we also hope to give those of us who are dedicated to curing illnesses and saving lives a chance to prove our abilities and then operate without interference."
Mr. Chabs didn't know that the source of his power was about to disappear. He only secretly hated the fact that this trip had greatly lost his face and reputation. He also hated Reed, who leaked the information to him and instigated him to steal the recipe of the Awakening Ointment, and he made a lot of trouble for his pharmacy.
I heard that not long after that, Reed's pharmacy's business plummeted, and more than a dozen stores were closed one after another. He was no longer seen in London.
Mr. Chabs's reputation was tarnished, and he was quickly expelled from the Royal College of Physicians before the latter even lost power. He wanted to open his own pharmacy and provide some medical services, but he was often found unqualified by the suppressed association and the newly established medical supervision agency. He eventually left London and his whereabouts are unknown.
Alice, however, had no intention of paying attention to the fate of Mr. Chabs and drug dealer Reed, as her mind was temporarily occupied by another matter.
Jane was proposed to.
The day after she was picked on, Mr. Bingley solemnly expressed his love to Jane and asked her to marry him, and she happily agreed.
Jane is going to get married suddenly, and she will soon have a brother-in-law. Now she feels a little unhappy about Mr. Bingley.
There are others who are even more unhappy than her.
Ever since Alice brought Jane to Bond Street and became neighbors with the Bingleys, Jane and Mr. Bingley have become closer. Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley often invite Jane to their home, as if by default. However, they are always uncomfortable, especially Miss Bingley, who wants to marry Mr. Darcy and truly achieve a class transition.
"Louisa, now our relatives will not only fill up Cheapside, but also Bond Street. How can a lady from a gentleman's family do business so well that everyone in London knows about it?" Miss Bingley complained.
"That's not bad. Miss Alice's shop has a good reputation in London's upper class. Being related to them will bring more benefits than disadvantages to our family." Mrs. Hurst knew what her sister was dissatisfied with, but she also advised her to face reality. "You can certainly continue to aim to become Mrs. Darcy, but if you fail and Mr. Darcy marries Jane's sister Elizabeth, then we will still be relatives. Don't make things too awkward."
"I know," Miss Bingley muttered. "If it weren't for anything else, my silly brother's heart has long been set on his fiancée. What else can I do?"
The newly engaged couple, having obtained Mr. Bennet's consent and Mrs. Bennet's high-decibel congratulations, were rushing back to London from Longbourn, planning to embark on a sweet pre-wedding holiday.
"Alyssa, do you want to go on vacation with us to the spa town of Bath?" Jane asked her sister Alice as soon as she returned to her residence in London.
The author has something to say:
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[1] The prescription refers to Xiao Chaihu Decoction in Treatise on Febrile Diseases; pint is a British unit of measurement for liquids. Four pints in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were equivalent to one dou and two liters in Treatise on Febrile Diseases during the Eastern Han Dynasty.
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