A Man of Science and Engineering in Troubled Times Wandering in the Late Qing Dynasty

Chapter 33
There are all tables and chairs in the house, and the materials are also quite elegant.

Li Yu naturally lived in the main room in the north. Anyway, he was the only one now, so he directly used the east wing as a study.

At this moment, Li Yu sat at the desk, spread out the remaining manuscript paper, and began to meditate on what kind of article he should write and send to Shenbao.

It is obvious that "Shenbao" is a news newspaper, and its main target is not professional groups, but the general public, so it is definitely not acceptable to write something that is too professional, and it may be regarded as nonsense.

However, if science popularization is written too simply, it is meaningless, and if it is too in-depth, it cannot be solved in one article.

Li Yu thought about it for a long time, but he didn't think about what to write, so he picked up the latest issues of "Shenbao" that he got from Shi Liangcai yesterday and read it.

He is very fluent in reading traditional Chinese now, and practiced soft pen calligraphy for a few years when he was a child, and he has no problem writing traditional Chinese.

After reading two issues of the newspaper, Li Yu finally found inspiration from a report:
This is an article about two villages fighting for a hilltop with better geomantic omens and water as the village burial mound. At the end of the article, it is mentioned that many villagers suffered sore wounds after being injured in the fighting, and even the doctor could not save them. Many people died.

The main meaning expressed in the editorial later was that the villagers should not hurt the harmony of the neighbors because of a trivial matter. As for the mention of wound ulcers and necrosis, it was more to raise the seriousness of the situation to alert the people.

However, Li Yu knew immediately from the sores on the wound that it was definitely caused by infection.

Naturally, the villagers use the hoes and shovels that they usually do in their daily work. These things are used for all kinds of work in the village. They are not only used to hoe the ground, but also directly used to clear the cesspit at home when it is blocked.

Li Yu lived in the village when he was a child, and he remembered that the old man said that the old dry toilets used to be connected to the pigsty, and if the pigs couldn't finish their poop, they would hoe it into the ground.Naturally, cow dung and horse dung cannot be wasted, and they are all hoed into the fields for fertilization.

Guo Degang once ridiculed Yu Qian's father, Mr. Wang, in a cross talk that he grew vegetables by himself and only used his own manure to fertilize.In fact, there was no chemical fertilizer in the village before, and manure was really the best farm manure.

Healthy, natural and convenient!
However, if this kind of feces and bacteria are used to fight with weapons, if the wound is hit, it is very easy to be infected.

In the past, when the Mongolian army used bows and horses to conquer the world, they would poison the arrows. The so-called poison was actually dipping the arrows in feces.This will cause the wound to be very susceptible to infection after the arrow is shot, and small injuries will also cause soldiers to die.

At that time, people didn't know that there were bacteria in feces, and even the West at that time had just realized that bacteria could cause diseases.

Li Yu decided to start here and talk about the importance of disinfection in detail.

After all, when it comes to surgical trauma, disinfection is extremely important.In an era like the late Qing Dynasty, if the disinfection is not timely and leads to infection, there is indeed nothing to do.

The batch application of the antibiotic miracle drug penicillin will take at least 40 years after World War II.

Li Yu has also read many time-travel articles about modern people going back to the past and immediately researching and producing penicillin. In fact, this is really too difficult.

First of all, it is not easy to find strains, and then how to increase the unit yield is the real big problem.

Fleming had already discovered Penicillium in 1928, but he himself failed to isolate penicillin.

Until ten years later, in 1938, German chemist Chain turned to Fleming's papers in the pile of old books.Then their team spent several years, and cooperated with the military, used countless mice and did countless experiments to increase the production of penicillin and obtain penicillin crystals.

Penicillin was not mass-produced until around 1943.

To put it simply, if you want to purify penicillin, you need a certain amount of luck and a lot of experiments. Not to mention the strains, the mice just don't know where to find them.

Therefore, the only way to deal with infection now is to prevent it, to avoid wound infection as much as possible in the first place.

Li Yu wrote down the most commonly used disinfection products in modern medicine: medical alcohol, iodophor, iodine, sodium hypochlorite, and phenol.Fortunately, this is not complicated medical knowledge, I have learned chemistry in high school.

Then Li Yu ruled them out one by one, only medical alcohol can be used.Although the other four have better effects, ordinary medical clinics in the late Qing Dynasty obviously did not have the conditions to manufacture these chemicals.

However, medical alcohol is only a little higher in concentration, and its preparation method is not much different from wine making.

Don't underestimate alcohol disinfection, which is now common sense. In fact, it was not until two years later, in 1904, that humans realized that alcohol can disinfect.

With this topic in mind, Li Yu immediately thought about it like a diarrhea, and quickly wrote the article.

First of all, he appealed to all medical clinics to be sure to do a good job of cleaning and to use more soap to improve hygiene.If it involves trauma treatment, it is even more important to ensure that the wound is clean.

Li Yu took the trouble to introduce the pasteurization method in detail, and the operation is also very simple. According to the concept of pasteurization, if it is some liquid that needs to be drunk, it can be heated to 60 degrees Celsius.However, there were no thermometers at that time, and almost all the medical halls heated utensils, so it was easier to heat them directly in boiling water.

Then he wrote that high-concentration alcohol could be used to disinfect the wound. He emphasized the high concentration, for fear that the hospital would directly greet him with ordinary liquor.Originally, Li Yu wanted to write about the concentration out of rigor, and 75% is definitely the best, but suddenly thinking about it, let them increase the concentration as much as possible. After all, there is no measuring meter, and at that time the highest concentration of distilled alcohol was about the same. .So first of all, it can be promoted simply and effectively, otherwise the medical center will definitely not do it if it is too difficult.

Furthermore, if alcohol is directly applied to the wound, there will be strong irritation and pain, but who knows that there is no iodine!Pain is better than death.

In order to improve the credibility, Li Yu also made up some examples of disinfection and non-sterilization for comparison. Anyway, there will be more such things in later generations, so it can't be said to be fabricated!
The article was written very quickly, and Li Yu finished it in less than two hours.

It seems to be common sense, but at that time, it was the latest scientific research achievement in the past 20 years!
In fact, the realization that disease has a cause was already a major advance in human civilization at the time.In the early years, regardless of the East and the West, many people thought that getting sick was provoking ghosts and gods, otherwise there would not be so many wizards, witches and magic sticks doing all kinds of exorcism.

After writing the article, Li Yu stretched vigorously, and then went to Jinyu Alley to find Ding Deshan, the founder of Donglaishun, who was still setting up a noodle stall.

Needless to say, Li Yu only knew what craftsmanship is after eating his noodles.In a good mood today, Li Yu ordered a bowl of haggis noodles and added a large plate of mutton.

When Li Yu returned to the residence with a full belch, Li Yu happened to see that Shi Liangcai had also arrived.

Li Yu gave him the article, which was not very deep, so Shi Liang fully understood it, and just asked, "Is this really possible?"

"Absolutely no problem! How could I make fun of people's lives! Don't worry, foreign doctors perform routine operations in hospitals in the concession," Li Yu affirmed.

"With your words, I feel relieved!" Shi Liangcai thanked, "I didn't expect Mr. to have a benevolent heart of a doctor."

Li Yu laughed and said, "You're flattering me, I don't know medicine, I just know a thing or two about microbes."

"microorganism?"

"Um, it's not easy to explain, anyway, trust me!"

(End of this chapter)