A doctor who travels through two eras

Although she really wanted to laugh, Lin Sanqi knew she couldn't; laughing would be too immoral.

So on the surface, Lin Sanqi still pretended to be unhappy and rebuked the Yang brothers:
"Alright, alright, we live in a new society now. Women hold up half the sky. How can you keep cursing at women like that? Besides, it's not shameful for a mother to beg for help so her son can live. It's admirable."

As soon as Lin Sanqi finished speaking, the local officials and female villagers around him all applauded.

"Wang Juan, right? Where do you live? Take me there. It's getting dark soon, and you don't have any electric lights here. We won't be able to see anything then."

Upon hearing this, Wang Juan excitedly pushed through the crowd:

"Cadre Lin, please do as you say. My home is right under the old locust tree. You see, it's not far."

Lin Sanqi picked up his backpack and followed Wang Juan toward the Yang family's house, followed by a large group of people.

Several soldiers from the Shaanxi Provincial Military Region ran quickly and immediately began to check the surrounding area for any suspicious persons.

Although Lin Sanqi's rank is not high enough to warrant security, Junwei has given him strict orders because of his special status: Lin Sanqi must be closely protected when he goes out.

Of course, Lin Sanqi himself didn't care; he was just flying around in military planes all day long to make money.

This isn't America, where people fight every day, so what's so scary?

After walking for 5 minutes, Lin Sanqi finally arrived at the Wang family's door. It was a small hut with mud walls, and the conditions were extremely poor.

However, these days, most people's houses are like this, so there's nothing particularly good or bad; everyone is poor on a very average level.

Lin Sanqi walked into the room. The lighting wasn't very good, and for a moment, he couldn't see clearly.

But you can immediately smell a distinct stench of decay, which, combined with the stuffy heat of the house after being exposed to the summer sun, makes it very unpleasant and even nauseating.

Wang Juan spoke up at this point: "Officer Lin, this is my youngest son, please take a look."

After Lin Sanqi's eyes adjusted to the light, she saw a little boy of about seven or eight years old lying on the broken bed. His entire left thigh and calf were ulcerated.

Lin Sanqi took out a flashlight from his backpack, immediately squatted down, and shone it on the wound to see it more clearly.

The child's entire left leg appears to have suffered some kind of external injury; it is now severely swollen, and a pool of pus can be seen on the straw mat.

The key issue is that the entire leg was covered in a layer of unknown Chinese herbal medicine, emitting a putrid odor.

Experienced doctors can tell that a wound is in a state of suppuration and ulceration just by looking at the redness, swelling, heat, and pain of the affected limb.

Lin Sanqi asked, "What kind of herbs are applied to this?"

Yang Zhifa, ultimately heartbroken for his son, anxiously replied when he saw that the high-ranking official was willing to help his youngest son:

"It's a herb called 'Tougu Cao' (透骨草), which I personally collected from Mount Li. It has the effects of dispersing blood stasis, reducing swelling, detoxifying, and relieving pain. This has been passed down from generation to generation."

Lin Sanqi then asked, "Little friend, how did you get this wound?"

Wang Juan wiped away her tears and said:
"It was all because he was hungry. My youngest son was so hungry that he went to take the eggs from a bird's nest he found in a tree. As a result, he accidentally fell from the tree and the branches cut his left leg, making it bleed profusely."

This happened 7 days ago. After I brought it home, I applied this herb to my wounds, but it only made things worse.

I started having a fever four days ago, and it got so high that I started talking incoherently at night. If this continues, I'm afraid I won't survive.

Lin Sanqi put on gloves and checked again, finding that there was nothing wrong with the bones; it was purely a skin infection.

However, because the infection was not cleaned and treated in time, it has now become inflamed, and the local inflammation has turned into a systemic infection.

That is, sepsis, which is a serious condition and can even be life-threatening.

It's entirely possible that Wang Juan said she couldn't go on living.

Lin Sanqi wondered if such a minor illness had dragged on for so long because the Yang family had too many children and the parents didn't take it seriously, or if there were other difficulties.

This is something that needs to be clarified.

"Have you taken him to the village clinic for treatment? This illness isn't difficult to treat at first; it's just a small skin abrasion."

Village Chief Yang awkwardly smiled and said:

"Commissioner Lin, our village doesn't have a clinic." Lin Sanqi thought it was normal for villages to not have doctors in the 1960s, and then asked, "What about the commune clinic?"

Village Chief Yang shook his head again: "Our Xinfeng Commune doesn't have a health clinic either."

Lin Sanqi turned to look at Village Chief Yang, puzzled:
"The communes are now at the township level, and they don't have health centers? Where do you ordinary people go for medical treatment?"

Village Chief Yang sighed and said:

“If you really need to see a doctor, you have to walk three hours to Lintong County Hospital, but our county hospital doesn’t have many medicines. If you have a serious illness, you still have to go to Xi’an for treatment, but that’s too far away, and you need a referral letter from the village to go.”

Lin Sanqi thought to himself, "As expected. Commune clinics are difficult to popularize even in the capital region, let alone in the Northwest. It's understandable."

Village Chief Yang continued to complain:

"Even if we manage to get to a major hospital in Xi'an, we farmers don't have any money."

Commissioner Lin, actually, the doctor at the county hospital also said that for a child like ours, penicillin is needed to save their life. But penicillin is too expensive, and the county hospital doesn't have it.

The doctor also said that before liberation, a single dose of penicillin reportedly cost five silver dollars in Shanghai. But when it was shipped from the coast to our northwest, a single dose of penicillin cost the price of a small yellow croaker.

Even so, there's still no market for it; it's difficult to buy, you have to find connections.

Before liberation, at least we could spend money to buy it from foreign firms, but after liberation, there were no foreign firms or traveling merchants. It is said that there was not much penicillin in the whole of Shaanxi Province, and only a few hospitals in Xi'an had a small reserve.

The doctor at the county hospital also said that almost all penicillin in our country is now imported. The government price is 2 cents, which doesn't seem very expensive, but you can't buy it at that price.

If we can afford 10 yuan per bottle, he'll try to get us a few, but the quantity won't be too large.

But 10 yuan a bottle, isn't that going to kill us? We farmers work hard all year round, and at the end of the year we only get five or six yuan.

In other words, we can't afford a bottle of penicillin even after a year of hard work.

So now it's up to the child's own fate. If he's strong, he can survive; if he doesn't, there's nothing we can do. People are starving; where would we get the money for medical treatment?

Lin Sanqi wasn't surprised to hear that a single penicillin cost 10 yuan.

It's worth noting that during those three years, a pound of rice could sell for 4 or 5 yuan on the black market in the capital region.

A bottle of penicillin is definitely worth more than two kilograms of rice, so the price of 10 yuan is not outrageous, and is not even too expensive.

The problem was that each bottle cost 10 yuan, and a course of treatment would require at least five or six bottles, which would cost 50 or 60 yuan. In the 1960s, this was a heavy burden, not to mention farmers, even workers would find it difficult to afford.

Thinking of this, Lin Sanqi silently started doing the math again.

Over the years, he has transported several million bottles of penicillin over the years, except for those from Yunnan, which were supplied through designated channels.

Logically speaking, given the amount of penicillin the ministry received, it should have distributed some based on population proportion or the importance of the provinces and cities.

So why is Xi'an, a major city in Northwest China, still so short of supplies?
Lin Sanqi looked at Director Liu, who had accompanied him to the villager's house:
"Director Liu, is the supply of penicillin in Shaanxi Province very tight? Or has the higher authorities not allocated any?"

Director Liu, being of a certain rank, had naturally heard of Lin Sanqi's reputation and knew about his actions, so he patiently explained:
"Commissioner Lin, it's like this, the Ministry of Health regularly allocates penicillin. As far as I know, 20 doses were shipped over last year. You see, Commander Qi is here too. At that time, the local authorities and the military each took 10 doses."

In other words, only 10 units were actually allocated to our local area.

10 doses may seem like a lot, but Commissioner Lin, let's do a simple calculation. There are 2000 million people in Shaanxi Province, which means that only one dose of penicillin can be distributed to every 200 people.

If we do the math, penicillin is taken twice a day, so a patient needs two bottles a day, and a course of treatment would take at least 5 days, right? That would be 10 bottles.

This is only for mild cases. For severe cases, 40 units are far from enough; 80 or even 160 million units are needed at once. So, Mr. Lin, do the math: 10 bottles of penicillin can only supply a few thousand patients.

With 2000 million ordinary people and only a few thousand available slots, this amount is simply a drop in the ocean.

Our province now has regulations that penicillin can only be used for critically ill patients; it should not be used lightly for mild cases. Therefore, each county has a small reserve, but these are life-saving drugs, and every dose used reduces the supply; we dare not release them lightly.

Lin Sanqi held back from saying it, thinking that this amount was probably only available to leading cadres.
Keep it as a backup?

The child in bed is on the verge of death from the infection; isn't that critical enough? Why won't they take him out? (End of Chapter)