1855 United States Tycoon

Chapter 59

In June 1858, the “Lancet” magazine in London published such a paper-“Research on the Causes of Some Infectious Diseases and the Treatment Effects of Certain Chemical Substances on them”.

This is a very long paper. Publishing it takes up all the pages of this issue of “The Lancet” except for the cover and back cover, making this issue of “The Lancet” unable to publish anything else. paper. Even so, this issue of the magazine is still extraordinarily thick. But after reading this paper, almost everyone thinks that the Lancet magazine made such an arrangement is more appropriate, because in the history of medicine, there is rarely a paper that actually contains more The pioneering and even decisive content in this respect-this is a paper that will definitely be recorded in the annals of history. Some people even treasured this issue of The Lancet as a collection, but after many years, their vision was verified. By 1954, it was the 110th anniversary of the birth of the medical pioneer Scrooge. At that time, a “Lancet” magazine with Scrooge’s signature that was collected by a caring person was actually auctioned for a sky-high price of 2 million US dollars! You know, this is the time when the US dollar and gold are still tied together.

In this paper, Shi Gaozhi pointed out that some invisible microorganisms are the cause of many infectious diseases. Although such things as microorganisms were discovered by Leeuwenhoek as early as 1683, people have never connected them with the cause of disease. In the original history, it was not until 1865 that the French microbiologist Pasteur discovered the relationship between these small things and the disease for the first time when he was studying silkworm disease. In fact, this is not to blame the European scientists for being too insensitive. After Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope and discovered the bacteria for so many years, they have not understood these very simple problems today. This is because the difference in refractive index between bacteria and the surrounding environment is extremely small. Even under the microscope, people can see something at most, and can’t see the details at all, let alone identify them. In fact, until 1884, the Danish doctor Gram invented the Gram staining method, it was very difficult for people to identify the types of bacteria.

And now, this paper by Scrooge suddenly advances these crucial discoveries. In this paper, Scrooge first introduced in detail how to stain bacteria for easy observation (Gram staining method), and using this method, it was found in the saliva, blood, and excrement of some patients. A lot of pictures of bacteria that normal people don’t have. It was confirmed that diseases including cholera, smallpox, puerperal fever, sepsis, tetanus, etc. are all caused by different bacterial infections. Any paper, as long as it has one such epoch-making discovery, is enough to be handed down, and any person, as long as there is one such discovery in his lifetime, it is enough to be Immortal! In addition to pointing out the cause of the problem, this paper even proposed a series of methods.

In this paper, Scrooge pointed out that an important reason for the high death rate in hospitals is poor sanitation and cross-infection caused by the failure to thoroughly disinfect items that may contain pathogenic bacteria. In order to solve this problem, he came up with several feasible disinfection methods, such as alcohol disinfection, high-temperature steaming disinfection, sunlight disinfection, etc., and also used pictures to illustrate the effect of disinfection. With these methods, if a hospital is willing to follow the method seriously, the death caused by various cross-infections will be greatly reduced. Not to mention other things, at least, the incidence of puerperal fever that causes a large number of maternal deaths will inevitably be Decline by an alarming rate. It can be said that this paper has changed the status quo that going to the hospital is equivalent to going to the grave. Nowadays, hospitals may still not have many ways to treat patients, and still need to use some treatment methods that are not useful or even have bad effects (such as letting patients eat oil. This is a real thing, and it is also what oil is in Europe and the United States. The first use. They really regard humans as Autobots and Decepticons), but at least, the danger of death is greatly reduced. Any paper with one such epoch-making discovery is enough to pass down the world. , And any one person, as long as there is one such discovery in his life, it is enough Immortal!

But this paper does more than just do this. In the paper, Shi Gaozhi even came up with how to treat patients who have been infected by the bacteria! Scrooge claimed that when he was studying how to stain bacteria, he found that certain chemicals have a very obvious inhibitory effect on the growth and reproduction of bacteria, so he thought of using these chemicals to treat bacterial infections. All kinds of diseases. To this end, he designed a series of experiments:

First, he artificially infected rabbits and other animals with certain pathogenic bacteria. After these rabbits showed very obvious symptoms of illness, he gave the rabbits that special chemical agent. After thousands of comparative experiments (Here Scrooge is obviously bragging, but who will expose Scrooge’s employees? Even if they go to reveal the truth, who will believe it?), Scrooge is convinced , This kind of chemical agent has obvious effect, and there are no particularly serious side effects. (At that time, a lot of mercury, arsenic and other things were used to deal with skin diseases such as syphilis, and the death rate caused by it was almost 50%. There was a rash on the body, and the whole body was itchy. What is it? .)

After the animal experiments, he cautiously conducted human experiments. And in the treatment of sepsis, pneumonia, and even cholera and other diseases, very good results have been obtained. So he was convinced that the day to completely defeat all kinds of infectious diseases is not far away.

Such a paper has made epoch-making contributions from principle to prevention to treatment. How can this not shock the medical and scientific communities throughout Europe. Except for what the last mysterious “chemical agent” is, everyone does not know what the other parts of the paper are, and everyone can easily verify it through experiments. In fact, before the paper is published, the “Lancet 》The experiments have been verified, and after the paper was published, scientists across Europe have verified the authenticity of these experiments according to the methods in the paper. The only thing that is still in doubt is-what is that “chemical agent” and is it really that useful?

Scrooge certainly did not forget to apply for a patent for his sulfa drugs. There are many types of sulfa drugs. In the original history, by 1949, there were at least 5,000 sulfa drugs in the world, but in fact the most useful and effective ones were There are only a limited number of dozens, and Scrooge applied for patents on all of them in one breath. In addition, he also applied for patents for the most common processes for the production of sulfonamides, building a high patent barrier. At that time, under the leadership of the British, major powers such as Britain, France, United States, Germany, and Russia all mutually recognized patent rights. The term of such international patent rights was 14 years. The protection period has reached 22 years. This means that within 14 years, almost the entire world, only he can produce this drug, and within 22 years, only he can produce sulfa in the entire United States. Being able to monopolize this market for such a long period of time is enough for him to build an empire no less than Vanderbilt back then.

Half a month later, the first batch of sulfonamides arrived in the UK in the expectation of the whole of Europe. And almost sold out in the blink of an eye. Then the entire European medical community opened its eyes wide, waiting for the results from the hospitals in the UK. After another week, preliminary results came out. Facts have proved that sulfa is not only effective for sepsis, puerperal fever, and pneumonia, but it can also produce obvious effects for any disease related to bacteria.

“If there really are so-called medicines that can cure all diseases, sulfa is probably it. Now as long as I find that there is something I can’t deal with, my first reaction is to use sulfa, and it almost never Let me down.” A doctor said in an interview with The Times.

Now, the whole of Europe has no more doubts about sulfa. People praised this great discovery one after another. Even the great revolutionary leader Karl Marx praised Scrooge’s discovery as a great achievement comparable to Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, Darwin’s theory of evolution and Newton’s three laws. Now, the only problem is that the output of sulfonamides is still too low, and the price is still too high, far from being able to meet market demand.

Because Scrooge claimed that sulfa was accidentally discovered when he was trying to find a pigment to dye bacteria, so just like the price of a rabbit, the price of various pigments was affected by his paper. For example, the price of indigo once more than doubled. Patients who got sick but couldn’t get sulfa started to eat all kinds of dyes indiscriminately, so that the excrement of some patients turned blue.

In this kind of enthusiasm, the Royal Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences all sent out invitations like this United States guy who is thousands of miles away, hoping that he can become their foreign academician. And a series of universities in Europe have also sent out invitations to Scrooge.

United States President Buchanan also strongly praised Scrooge’s achievements and invited Scrooge to a banquet at the presidential palace. However, Scrooge refused the invitation under the pretext of using his own time for scientific research, but soon afterwards he appeared at a Republican rally-this was obviously a political statement that couldn’t be more obvious. The Republican Party and Lincoln himself are very grateful for this.

After receiving the invitation of the Royal Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences, Scrooge decided to accept their invitation and become their foreign academician. Because this has too much effect on brushing prestige. In the world at that time, the status of academicians of these two academies of sciences was very high. Becoming an academician of these two academies of sciences is a bit like becoming a so-called big Confucian in China. If ordinary forces want to move him, they will be very worried-in addition to the guns in their hands and their worldwide influence, they are also Protect the own method.