Nineteenth Century Medical Guide

Chapter 12 12. Leeches and Mercury

This is a custom-made kitchen for Alphonse. Apart from some necessary ornate decorations, everything reveals practicality and spaciousness.

Classical French cuisine emphasizes greasy and smooth taste. In order to increase layers and diversity, various cooking oils are used.But the "clean" that Carvey said made Alphonse stuck: "Clean, how can it be considered clean?"

"The best is freshly squeezed vegetable oil, the kind that has been stored in a glass bottle."

The conditions were not too harsh, and Alphonse immediately thought of several suitable oils: "Yes, yes, but I need to hear your answer first, why does it hurt here?"

Watching him pointing at his upper right abdomen, Kavi didn't want to waste time, and directly hit his pain point: "The reason is very simple, because of your figure."

Alphonse's figure, to put it mildly, is burly and strong, but if he is honest, or looks at the problem from a simpler perspective, he is actually fat.

He is not the kind of obese who is full of fat. He has worked on the cooking table all year round and has gained a lot of muscle.Therefore, a more accurate statement about his figure should be overweight, that is, the ratio between height and weight is out of balance.

But if it doesn't count if the limbs are removed, just looking at his torso, especially the big round belly, it is too fat to say that he is fat.

As for the figure, Alphonse is in a wonderful state where his body is lying flat but he is still unwilling to lie down.It's like a toad thrown into warm soup, looking at the flames below, knowing that he is going to die, but he still has to kick his legs to show his resistance before he dies, otherwise he will appear too casual.

So in terms of appellation, you can't just call him Fatty. "Fatty flexible" is his bottom line. After all, he can cook the best French dishes with his hands.

"I know I'm fat, but what does fat have to do with stomach pain?"

"It's not a stomachache, it's your liver."

He is as strong as Alphonse, and he is an excellent chef. He usually tastes French dishes with extremely high fat content. If he said that he does not have a fatty liver, no one would believe it.

Judging from Carvey's 30 years of medical practice experience, Alphonse's fatty liver is already quite serious, and the probability of pain in the right upper quadrant is very high [1].Of course, a high probability does not necessarily mean that there will be one. Some people have no symptoms of fatty liver even at the level of mild cirrhosis.

If Alphonse denies the dull pain in the upper right quadrant, Carvey also has other plans.

For example, coughing, chest tightness caused by oil fumes affecting the respiratory system, and varicose veins in the lower limbs caused by standing for a long time are fine.

Chefs have many occupational diseases. These three are easy to judge, but they are not well known to people in the nineteenth century, and they can play a deceptive effect.

Of course, not all chefs have occupational diseases.If Alphonse was asymptomatic, Carvey would reverse-engineer his daily habits in order to gain trust.For example, no smoking or drinking, regular life, light diet, etc., there is always one that suits him.

He has limited channels for obtaining information, and the only thing he knows is Alphonse's figure.Therefore, adequate preparations must be made to deal with uncertain situations.

Fortunately, with good luck, Alphonse was bluffed at the beginning.

"Physicians may not understand, but surgery is very clear from dissections every day. Your body is full of fat, and these fats sometimes enter the internal organs. The most obvious one is the liver, the kind of high-grade foie gras with a dense and smooth taste. You should be the most It's too familiar."

As a top chef in France, Alphonse naturally knows how high-end foie gras comes from.The duck-feeding method is to make the goose grow as fat as possible, and a large amount of body fat accumulates in the liver to form this unique taste.

"You mean, my liver is the same as the foie gras on the dinner plate?"

"It may be more serious." Carvey patted Alphonse's stomach, and said in a way that the other party could understand, "A liver full of fat is much larger than normal, but its space But it is fixed, and it will naturally hurt when you squeeze it.”

Alphonse thought of how he felt when he was nestled in the small kitchen before, and his face was a little dignified.

He took a green vial from the corner of a cupboard and said, "I went to Hartmann's before, and the doctor there told me I needed to be phlebotomized, sucking blood with those black worms. Then I was sent to the street. The pharmacy bought a whole bottle of mercury and told me to drink it twice a day."

Leech with mercury.

Absolutely.

Karvey cleared his throat, and didn't know how to explain it, so he could only continue to ask: "Have you tried it?"

"I tried it, the bloodletting therapy is really helpful, and every time I let go of the thick and sticky blood, it makes me feel more relaxed." Alphonse praised the leeches, but he didn't have such a good comment on the bottle of mercury, " But the quicksilver he gave was a bit unpalatable."

This is an old concept from top to bottom, which has been deeply rooted in the bones of Europeans, and it is difficult to explain it in a few words.

Carvey is well aware of the difficulty of popularizing science, so he did not refute his treatment experience. After all, the placebo effect [2] also exists: "How much can you drink each time? Can you tell me about your reaction after drinking mercury?"

"Just one sip. After all, this small bottle cost me a whole 5 crowns." Alphonse explained, "It tastes strange and tasteless when you eat it. After eating, your stomach will feel a little uncomfortable, your saliva will become more, and then you will eat it." He'll spit out everything he ate that day."

"Didn't this also spit out the mercury?"

"But I think it's good. The doctor said that the body is detoxifying, and the treatment is effective." After some communication just now, Alphonse's attitude towards Kawi has also changed, "What do you think? Do you have any good suggestions? "

Kavi stood up straight, tilted his head back slightly, and nodded after thinking for a moment: "It's not bad, but don't drink mercury for now. Throwing up after eating is the same as not eating. If you toss and toss over and over again, it's better to drink it all together." Don't eat at first."

"You mean not to eat?"

"Eat less, this disease needs to control the amount of food you eat, and it takes time to adjust slowly."

".So it was."

Carvey's consolation temporarily relieved Alphonse's anxiety, and made him talk about his experience when he traveled to the East: "A few years ago, I left France and went to the East with the merchant fleet. Got some really good doctors."

"East?"

"Well, it's a beautiful country, very warm, but"

"Just what?"

"Too many people." Alphonse laughed.

"Speaking of which, their suggestions are similar to what you just said, and they let me eat less. But I can't help it. As the head chef, it is impossible to keep the old dishes for a lifetime. It is my task to create new dishes. And that comes with constant experimentation.”

When it came to trying dishes, he became interested, and suddenly leaned over and took out a piece of dried salted fish from a side cabinet: "Speaking of which, their eating habits are rich and diverse, and I have learned a lot of useful things from them."

At first, Carvey thought that he was using dried salted fish as a reference, but he did not expect that the French already had the way of eating salted fish【3】.There is something else that can really be Alphonse's inspiration, and he is full of praise for it:
"They handled a whole piece of pork shoulder just right, the surface was oily and smooth, with a bright glass luster. The layering between the fat and the thin, and the repeated intertwining and entanglement with chewing, is really remarkable. Of course, I can do that too, but what I can't do is actually this"

Alphonse opened the cap of the small bottle, and judging from the smell and color, it should be authentic Cantonese-style barbecued pork sauce.

"What is this?" Carvey asked knowingly.

"A kind of local seasoning, the taste is sweet and delicious, and it tastes delicious."

Kavi had no interest in cooking at first, but seeing him want to talk about it again, the last bit of patience was worn out.After cultivating the relationship for so long, caring about the body and chatting with him, it should be my turn to get down to business.

"Okay, okay, I'm here to borrow something. So, where's my oil?"

"Oh, yes, yes, oil~~~"

Alphonse quickly found several bottles of cooking oil from the cabinet on the other side. According to Carvey's request, they were all extracted from plants: "Peanut oil, walnut oil, olive oil, sesame oil, linseed oil."

"Peanuts and walnuts have residues, and the color of sesame oil is too dark for observation, but olive and linseed oil are good." Carvey quickly made a decision, "I want these two bottles, okay?"

Alphonse nodded: "It's just two bottles of oil, no problem."

During the period when Carvey went to borrow oil, the abdominal surgery that Ignatz mentioned before was gradually approaching.

Unlike modern surgery, because there is no concept of asepsis, and for the purpose of entertainment and appreciation, surgery in the nineteenth century will be performed in a specific "operating room" in the theater.

Those low-level surgeons will temporarily rent some small theaters to perform operations on patients. The Municipal General Hospital is the largest hospital in Austria. Of course, the style is much more generous. The operating room is arranged in the largest theater in the area, the Theater an der Wien .

Of course, surgery is not an overly elegant performance, and it was accompanied by all kinds of heart-piercing screams in the early years, so the location of the room is relatively biased.

Accompanied by two assistants and family members, the patient is sent to the preparation room to rest an hour before the procedure.Mainly to help soothe the patient's restless mood, and do some preparations for knives and other equipment.

Ignatz, who is the chief surgeon, will arrive before the opening. Firstly, he is too busy with work, and secondly, he does not need much preparation time.The main thing is to check the operation area before the operation and quickly simulate the entire operation process, a few minutes is enough.

But today is different. The person lying on the blood-stained operating bed today is Count Morazo [4], the cousin of the King of the Austrian Empire.As an aristocrat, it is of course impossible for people and medical history data to stay with those common people.

So Carvey didn't know about the operation.

The patient is very important, and the operation is difficult. The onlookers are all relatives of the royal family, close friends and colleagues with scalpels.Although the earl kept saying that he was old, he didn't care whether he lived or died.But in fact, counting his age, he is only seven or eight years older than Ignatz, far from being old.

In order to prepare for this operation, Ignatz searched all the reference books he could find, and had been begging for corpses everywhere before, trying to do as much practice as possible.

But the uncertainty of the operation still made Ignatz hesitate: "My lord, how about?"

"Don't say any more, you should understand my temper." Moraso pointed to his lower right abdomen, and said, "It's really uncomfortable to keep this thing for so many years. If you keep pushing, I will do it myself."

　This book only focuses on medicine itself, and hardly talks about modern domestic history, and a small person like the protagonist has no ability to change domestic history.All he can do is rely on his professionalism to speed up the development of medicine a little bit. In the end, this book is still a professional book in the city rather than a historical book. (For the sake of easy picture matching, the remarks will be removed from this chapter in the future.)
　　
　
(End of this chapter)