Chapter 1185: Life-saving Artifact

There are already several people busy in the pathogen laboratory.

Several rows of wooden shelves were filled with a dazzling array of glassware, and a long table was placed with several microscopes. The sink, operating table, various knives and strange-shaped glassware looked very strange.

Although it was April, Ma Yilong couldn't help shivering.

Pang Xian stepped forward and reported to Li Shizhen and Li Lunming who were studying under a microscope, and then the two of them looked up at Zhao Hao.

"You're here at the right time. Look." Li Shizhen greeted Zhao Hao excitedly.

"What did you find?" Zhao Hao walked over with interest, stood between Li Wan and the other man, and put one eye on the eyepiece of the microscope.

I saw a thin layer of solid culture medium in the glass petri dish... This is a transparent agar made from agar-agar produced from the sea, and then a little nutritious gravy is added, which can not only cultivate bacterial growth, but also facilitate observation. This method is still being used four hundred years later. In this time and space, it is naturally regarded as one of Mr. Zhao's many insignificant scientific inventions.

Of course, the culture medium is not the point; the point is the small round dots on the culture medium.

"What kind of coccus is this?" Zhao Hao asked without thinking.

Li Lunming answered from the side: "We have found this kind of coccus in the purulent wounds of different patients. According to the method taught by the master, after staining with iodine, it is golden yellow when observed under the oil microscope. It should be the Staphylococcus aureus that the master mentioned."

"Oh." Zhao Hao nodded. Anyone with a little common sense in the future would know that this is the most common pathogen, which can cause various types of infections and is zoonotic. It is the biggest threat to people after they are injured.

But for the doctors of the Ming Dynasty, this was a remarkable discovery.

But obviously, this is not what makes Er Li excited, because this plate... Oh no, they did not dye this plate of cocci, the purpose is naturally to avoid contaminating the test results!

"Sir, look down." Seeing his eyes wide open, Li Er was so anxious that he jumped up and down. "It's so obvious that you can't see it?!"

Under the guidance of the two, Zhao Hao discovered that in the culture medium filled with colonies of cocci, there was a pale circular area. Because it was too obvious, he ignored it.

"Is this the cocci melting?" Zhao Hao finally understood and immediately became interested: "How did you do it?"

There are so many things that can kill yellow coccus, such as alcohol and iodine, so it is not surprising that it can be done. The key is how to do it.

"Use this!" Li Shizhen picked up a spotted orange.

"Oh my god, you have isolated penicillin!" Zhao Hao was immediately excited. Oh my god, I have finally waited for this day...

Why is Mr. Zhao always so cautious? He never drinks raw water, and he always boils fruits and vegetables before eating them. He refuses to do any intense activities, and dares not do any dangerous actions. It's because he is afraid of bacterial infection.

In this age of lack of medical care and medicine, a small cut or eating something bad can lead to a bacterial infection and death.

The last time he was hit on the head at sea, Mr. Zhao was so worried that he almost cried...

Therefore, one of the main purposes of his establishing the Jiangnan Hospital... was to try every possible means to improve the level of Ming Dynasty medicine and increase his chances of survival when illness or injury strikes.

Penicillin, as a life-saving artifact for time travel, is naturally the top priority of research and development.

In his previous life, he had watched the Japanese TV series "Doctor X" and remembered the plot of a southern doctor traveling back in time to ancient times to create penicillin. At that time, he also went to Zhihu and heard that there were three doctors of medicine providing medical guidance for the screenwriters, so the method should be reliable... right?

When Jiangnan Hospital was first established, Zhao Hao told the three doctors the method used by doctors in the south to extract penicillin. Basically, the oranges were sterilized and made into culture medium. Then, penicillium was inoculated from the moldy oranges and cultured and multiplied continuously.

After they have multiplied to a certain number, filter the culture solution with a funnel, add rapeseed oil to the filtered liquid, and stir it evenly in a bucket to separate the liquid into layers - the upper layer is oil-soluble substances, the middle layer is insoluble substances, and the lower layer is water-soluble substances.

Penicillin is a water-soluble substance. So by installing a tap at the bottom of the bucket, you can get penicillin dissolved in water.

Next, pour it into activated carbon sterilized with boiling water and stir. Then filter it with distilled water to wash away impurities. Then filter it with acidic water mixed with white vinegar. Since penicillin is weakly acidic, it will not dissolve in acidic water, so the alkaline impurities are removed.

Finally, filter it with baking soda water to obtain a high-purity penicillin solution.

It sounds simple, and Mr. Zhao also thinks it is not difficult. He thinks that it is just the stupid method of "separation-selection-purification-selection". Great strength can make miracles happen. Oh no, there is strength in numbers, and penicillin can definitely be extracted.

But Jiangnan Hospital has been established for two years. The three genius doctors and their disciples have been working day and night, and only now have they made a breakthrough...

But good food is never too late.

“Hahaha!” In the laboratory, Master Zhao’s triumphant laughter rang out: “I finally got to see penicillin while I’m still alive!”

~~

Ma Yilong certainly didn't know why Mr. Zhao was so excited. He felt like an idiot as soon as he entered the room.

Li Shizhen quickly pulled open the curtains and shouted to Mr. Zhao, who was dancing with excitement, "Calm down, don't damage the equipment!"

"Uh..." Zhao Hao held a flask awkwardly and laughed dryly: "Sorry, I was too excited."

"Sir, don't get excited too soon." Li Lunming smiled bitterly and said, "The petri dish you see is the only one that succeeded in this experiment."

"What about the others?" Zhao Hao asked hurriedly.

"It's all here." Li Lunming opened a cupboard, and hundreds of culture dishes were neatly stacked inside. "Before, we dripped the penicillin solution into these culture dishes, but we only got one successful sample."

"This is the success of my work since the beginning of the year," Li Shizhen said gloomily, "It has indeed been proven that penicillin can be extracted from Penicillium to kill bacteria, but after three months of hard work, the penicillin we obtained can't even kill all the cocci in a culture dish. This method is nothing more than a drop in the bucket for treating diseases."

"Spit is more effective than this." Li Lunming has a bad temper. If he wasn't wearing a mask, he would have spit into the petri dish.

But since he could say this, he must have tested the antibacterial effect of saliva...

"Don't be like that, this is a good thing." Zhao Hao suppressed his disappointment and thought to himself that he would have to continue to live on... But as a cheerleader, he smiled and encouraged the doctors, saying, "Aren't we all starting from scratch and working our way up to perfection? It's been less than two years, and we've already achieved something from scratch. This is cause for celebration!"

"That's right." As the dean of the medical school, Li Shizhen had to remain optimistic. "We worked on it for a whole year last year and got nowhere. We started to make some progress in the winter, but then we found out that penicillin is not heat-resistant and doesn't reproduce at all in the summer. The summers in the south of the Yangtze River are exceptionally long..."

"Uh..." Mr. Zhao nodded secretly after hearing this, it seemed like that. But it seemed like he forgot to say it, so in order to avoid being burned by the anger of the second Li, he pretended to be suddenly aware of it and said: "No wonder I couldn't copy it at the beginning, it turned out to be this reason."

"Your Excellency's discovery of penicillin is already amazing, isn't it?" Li Shizhen said with an expression that said, "How can you not be satisfied?"

"You need to have Penicillium from an unknown source fall into your Staphylococcus culture medium. It was still cool in early spring, so the Penicillium could grow and mature and produce penicillin. Then the temperature rose, which was conducive to the rapid growth of Staphylococcus, so that lysis occurred..." Li Lunming also looked at Zhao Hao in disbelief and said, "And you have to have not washed the culture dish for more than a month. If you were in medical school, you would have been expelled eight times."

"This is what they call "there is no coincidence in the world." Young Master Zhao laughed. Anyway, Fleming discovered penicillin under such extremely coincidental circumstances.

However, due to the technical conditions at the time, Fleming was unable to isolate penicillin. It was not until before World War II that the Americans isolated a little bit of penicillin. It is said that the penicillin produced in the entire United States in a year was only enough for one person...

In this light, it is quite normal that Jiangnan Hospital went to great lengths to produce this little bit of penicillin.

"What are you going to do next?" Young Master Zhao asked, changing the subject.

"Keep trying. There are still many areas that can be improved." Li Lunming said, "For example, purify the baking soda and see if it will be better."

"Well, this is one way." Zhao Hao racked his brains for a moment and said, "But the key is to breed more Penicillium. Maybe using citrus to cultivate it is not the best choice. Citrus is not the only one that has Penicillium..."

"Uh..." The two Lis looked at Zhao Hao speechlessly: "Why didn't you say so earlier?" They had always preconceived that only citrus Penicillium would work...

"I'm just guessing." Zhao Hao wiped his sweat and said with a wry smile, "Didn't I tell you before that you can't blindly trust authority and you should be brave enough to try."

"Okay." The two nodded and silently figured out where to extract the mold.

"Is this the progress you came to me for?" Zhao Hao asked with some disappointment.

"No." Li Shizhen said calmly: "The extraction of garlic extract was successful."

"Damn it, why didn't you say it earlier! You're trying to praise me by first criticizing me..." Young Master Zhao immediately smiled.

Compared to the difficult penicillin, extracting allicin is much simpler. Crush the garlic and let it stand for an hour, then soak and extract it with high-concentration alcohol to get a low-concentration alcohol solution of allicin. Or it can be obtained by steam distillation. The allicin solution has a killing effect on many cocci and bacilli, and also has an inhibitory effect on fungi. It can be regarded as a low-profile multi-purpose life-saving artifact...

"Uh, sorry to interrupt..." Seeing that the three of them were about to discuss allicin with great interest, Ma Yilong, who had been waiting for a long time, finally couldn't help but ask, "Can penicillin and allicin cure silkworm diseases?"

"Uh..." The three people who were getting excited just then remembered that there was another person here.

"Sorry, I don't know." Li Shizhen shook his head honestly and said, "It's just that I haven't caught him for a long time, so I reported the progress of my work to him."

(End of this chapter)