Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 106 Cinnamon
Zhu Youjian is no stranger to malaria.

This disease, which has ravaged Europe and Asia for thousands of years, has a huge impact on human life even in later generations.

Otherwise, Tu Youyou would not have won the Nobel Prize for artemisinin.

This disease is an infectious disease caused by Plasmodium. Generally, the infected person will go through the incubation period, chill period, fever period and sweating period until death.

It is precisely because of this that this disease is also called dabaizi, that is, it is very cold at first and then very hot again. When it is cold, it is useless to cover a few quilts even in the scorching heat, and it is useless to fall into the ice cellar when it is hot.

But now that Zhu Youjian heard that Bi Maokang had started to have a fever, his heart sank naturally.

This shows that even if Xu Wenjue brought a famous doctor in time, he still failed to prevent Bi Bi Maokang's condition from deteriorating.

Zhu Youjian quickly followed Xu Wenjue to Bi Maokang.

I saw Bi Maokang laying on the rattan chair with a flushed face, and shouted weakly: "My lord, why did you let your majesty come down? Let him go away quickly. It is my sin, Bi Maokang, to spread this disease to others and let your majesty contract the disease." Already!"

"Your Majesty, please forgive the old minister for being rude, please go back."

Bi Maokang nodded to Zhu Youjian drowsily. ,

Hearing this, Wang Chengen was also terrified. He was also afraid that his majesty would be ill, so he hurriedly persuaded him: "Your Majesty, why don't we go back. If you have anything to say, let others pass it on."

"What are you afraid of? Although malaria is transmitted, it is only transmitted through mosquito bites, and it is not plague. In this severe winter, there will be no mosquito bites."

As Zhu Youjian spoke, he walked up to Bi Maokang: "Bi Aiqing don't have to worry, although the malaria is fierce, but it is not incurable, I will find a way for you, you should rest well first, Daming still needs you."

Seeing that Bi Maokang was so weak, Zhu Youjian couldn't talk to him any more, so he ordered Xu Wenjue to take good care of him and then went to the main hall of Duke Wei's mansion to rest.

Wei Guogong is the title of Xu Da, the first general of the founding of the Ming Dynasty.

Since Zhu Youjian came to Wei Guogong's mansion, he naturally wanted to pay his respects to Xu Da. After three sticks of incense, he sat down and asked Xu Wenjue: "Do you have glass bottles from Westerners in your mansion?"

"Yes, I wonder why Your Majesty wants this thing?" Xu Wenjue asked.

"Pharmacy!"

Zhu Youjian said again: "I have heard for a long time that after you inherited the position of Duke, you blindly practiced alchemy and ignored Nanjing's military and political affairs. Especially after Chengyi Bo Liu Kongzhao took over as Caojiang Shuijun, you even hired a few foreigners to make alchemy together. , now I want you to refine a medicine to cure Bi Maokang's disease."

Xu Wenjue rubbed his head: "I dare not lie to Your Majesty, the elixir that I made is only useful for pleasure in the room, the young man is lustful, he has lost his health, and now he has to rely on these things to replenish his yang energy, so I have been looking for a good medicine that can show my glory again. If you need it, Your Majesty, I can offer a few good medicines that I have secretly hidden. But Bi Gong is so weak now, it is absolutely impossible for him to play. "

"absurd!"

Zhu Youjian patted the table.

"After all, you are also the first prince of the Ming Dynasty. You don't think about the country and the country, but study these things all day long. Well, I don't have time to teach you for the King of Zhongshan and my ancestor, the Empress Shangwen. Since you like to study this way, you can't just study it. Blindly making medicine for boudoir pleasure, although Bi Gong's disease is terrible, as long as he can make a medicine called Cinchona Cream, it can cure his disease and sell it to cure the gentry and common people suffering from the same disease. Making money and benefiting the people is more valuable than exercising on a woman's belly for a while!"

Zhu Youjian knew that the most famous anti-malarial drugs were cinchona cream and later artemisinin.

Although artemisinin is extracted from Artemisia annua, it is more difficult to extract than cinchona cream, and the application of artemisinin is the latest biotechnology in the 21st century. It is naturally impossible for him, a college student, to master the method here.

The effect of pure Artemisia annua is not obvious, and the alkaloid of artemisinin is quite different from the plant of Artemisia annua in essence.

Therefore, Zhu Youjian had no choice but to ask Xu Wenjue to develop Cinchona Cream.

Cinchona cream was the cure for malaria before the advent of artemisinin.

The reason why later generations let artemisinin ban cinchona cream is because cinchona cream has been used as an antimalarial drug for a long time, so many malaria parasites have developed resistance to cinchona cream.

Thus causing malaria in later life, on which cinchona cream has no effect.

In Daming, the extraction of alkaloids has not been used as medicine, so cinchona cream can have a radical effect on malaria in this era.

Compared with the extraction of artemisinin, the extraction of Cinchona Frost is not difficult. It only needs to be crushed and mixed with soda lime, then extracted with petroleum ether solvent, then extracted with dilute sulfuric acid, and then concentrated and crystallized to obtain Cinchona Frost Sulfate. Can.

Soda lime and dilute sulfuric acid are not difficult. In Daming, you can directly find someone to prepare and dilute them.

Only petroleum ether, an organic solvent, needs to distill petroleum.

But there are also workarounds.

After all, in China, the ancients, especially many alchemists, still knew about oil.

Oil was mentioned in Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Bi Tan".

Zhu Youjian believed that Xu Wenjue could also find this thing, and then distilled it with glass instruments to obtain petroleum ether.

To obtain petroleum ether by distillation of petroleum, petroleum ether is obtained through temperature control according to the different boiling points of various organic substances in petroleum.

The boiling point of petroleum ether is between [-] and [-] degrees Celsius, which is almost when water is about to boil. Zhu Youjian can ask Xu Wenjue to find someone to use water as a reference while distilling petroleum, so that petroleum ether can be obtained.

Of course, will it be possible to finally get Cinchona Cream, a magic medicine for treating malaria?

Zhu Youjian did not dare to have full guarantees.

However, Bi Maokang will eventually die due to malaria parasites destroying body functions anyway.

Zhu Youjian felt that it would be better to take the time to try it out, maybe he could really develop a medicine called Cinchona Cream, which would reduce the non-combat death rate of the Ming population, and thus make it more stable and win the hearts of the people.

It also saved the life of a scientist.

After all, in this era, many people always like to associate natural disasters with the virtues of their own king and officials.

The legal dominance of the imperial court is sometimes closely related to these plagues.

In addition, Zhu Youjian felt that instead of letting Xu Wenjue spend the hundreds of years of his family business accumulated by Wei Guogong's family on the production of 0-yang medicine, it would be better to let him do something serious and make some contributions to Ming's drug research.

Wei Guogong Xu Wenjue didn't know what kind of medicine Chongzhen Zhu Youjian was talking about, and he hadn't even heard of it.

But after Zhu Youjian said this, Xu Wenjue also knew that there was a great business opportunity in it, so he patted his chest hurriedly:
"Please rest assured, Your Majesty, I will definitely live up to your Majesty's expectations, and develop Kinney Cream as soon as possible."

"Confidence is a good thing. If this matter is completed well, I will let your Xu family exclusively manage the production and sales of Cinney Cream, but I will take [-]% of the profits, which can be regarded as technology shares," Zhu Youjian said.

Xu Wenjue didn't know what technology investment was, but he didn't dare to go against Zhu Youjian's will, so he could only agree. Of course, he also knew that if this medicine had a radical effect on malaria as His Majesty said, the profits it would bring It is more profitable than selling millennium ginseng.

Of course, Xu Wenjue doesn't care even if he loses money. His Xu family has a great career, and it is common for him to spend tens of thousands of dollars to develop elixir and fail. Now it is just another prodigal family. Anyway, it is to please His Majesty the Emperor, so why not do it.

　Someone mentioned asking the protagonist to get artemisinin. Well, I studied natural medicinal chemistry in college, and I specialized in the extraction of effective alkaloids from Chinese herbal medicines. Artemisinin, including other alkaloids, is not as easy to extract as we imagined. It has no effect, and no one knows whether the molecular bond is broken or the rare metal is omitted during the operation, and the process of further reaction and synthesis.If Artemisia annua could be used directly, the artemisinin that Tu Youyou spent her whole life making would not be so meaningful.Here I choose cinchona cream, that is, quinine, which is also an alkaloid, but the natural ingredient cinchona bark is also effective against malaria, and it is not difficult to extract, after all, it appeared in 1820.Why artemisinin is used instead of quinine to treat malaria now, I have explained it in the novel.Let's continue in the next chapter, and you can guess what my college major is.economy?chemical industry?medicine?
　　
　
(End of this chapter)