New World 1620

1621 6 Month 21 Day.

The English sailing ship HMS Hound, which was rescued by the whaling ship Mermaid more than a month ago, has finally been repaired in dry dock.During the repair process, the Hound Dog, whose internal and external structures were more precise and concise, aroused great interest in the young shipyard director Shi Yige. For more than a month, he spent most of his time doing ship structure surveying and mapping.

The fleet size of today's third voyage to Europe is spectacular.The Santa Maria, the St. Nicholas, the Wenwen and the renovated Hound made the residents of the Manhattan community feel full and excited.

The boatswain-level characters have all been promoted to be the acting captains of the fleet, and the average number of sailors on each ship is less than 20, and many crew members are new Europeans who have joined for less than three months, so in the fleet commander Adelaide At the insistence of Ren Changle, the chief accountant, several additional soldiers from the land garrison were stationed on each ship to ensure the safety of the ship.

It has only been more than a month since the second voyage to Europe. Such frequent trade and voyage arrangements make it impossible for the Brooklyn Industrial District to prepare enough goods to fill the cabin, but the Port of Heroes in the European Azores is squeezing A large amount of living and industrial and agricultural raw materials are waiting to be transported back to North America, so the cargo carried on this voyage is only enough to fill two and a half ships.

2000 Type 21B flintlock rifles were one of the most important goods, followed by 300 boxes of soap or soap made from whale blubber, 100 sets of exquisite glass wine sets that flowed long and thin to Europe, and thousands of pieces of mercury from the previous shipment. The processed mirrors, and less than 1 furs that were reluctantly repurchased after the last big liquidation, finally came up with the big killer jointly launched by the Ministry of Chemical Industry and the Ministry of Medical Sciences - [-] kg of berberine.

With hydrochloric acid, the so-called berberine can be extracted by using Coptis chinensis of Ranunculaceae as raw material, and the whole preparation process is extremely simple.

The difference in alkaloid composition and content leads to the fact that the extracted components of Coptis chinensis are not limited to the treatment of gastrointestinal bacterial infections such as dysentery, but also have a relatively wide and powerful antibacterial and anti-inflammatory effect for internal and external use. It is soluble in water and can even be used for wound disinfection.

Since there is no real pharmaceutical process for formal processing, it is foreseeable that this kind of purification without sugar coating is definitely the most bitter stuff that Europeans have ever had access to, and its value far exceeds that of the same weight. Dozens of times gold.

One gram of berberine powder is contained in a small sealed glass tube. The employees of the Ministry of Chemical Industry told Ren Changle thousands of times that such a daily dose of berberine is worth at least 1 pounds. When Chinese cabbage is sold.

Therefore, the main role of these 1000 tubes of berberine is still to serve as a reserve drug for ships, rather than for complete export, to replace the modern gastroenteritis drugs previously provided to ships.Limited stocks of modern medicines have resulted in community boards having to budget carefully.

In this way, the total value of the goods loaded by the entire fleet will exceed the previous two European trades, reaching a staggering 180 million Spanish silver dollars.Of course, it is impossible for such a valuable batch of commodities to be sold out in a short period of time in the Heroes Port of the Azores.

Amidst the sound of wheat waves and cheers on the river bank, and with the smiling faces of several members of the community committee seeing off, the four sailing boats slowly left the pier in the Brooklyn industrial area, and then turned to the south.

……

……

It was already dusk, but in a small two-storey building in the northwest corner of the Manhattan neighborhood, it was still busy.

Several young men and women in white coats surrounded an elderly woman in a wheelchair, and were attentively watching the row of glass petri dishes in the center of the room.

The room is painted in pure white, and it looks extremely clean. Many table working equipment are made of rare stainless steel structures, and even an air conditioner that was dismantled from an unknown ship is installed to keep the temperature in the room constant. constant temperature.In terms of the atmosphere and equipment here, it can be regarded as the place closest to a certain modern laboratory style in the entire Manhattan community, and from the outermost door number of the house, it also makes every community resident who passes by awe.

The medical research group is directly under the medical department of the community committee, and the leader is Huang Nian, the wife of the newly appointed judicial committee member of the community committee, a lecturer in the biology department of a certain university.

The irreversible comminuted fracture of the lower limbs caused by the catastrophe made Huang Nian the first person among all the seriously injured who could not survive the crisis.Although his life was finally saved by the superb medical skills of the director of the community hospital, Chen Changyuan, Huang Nian had to rely on a wheelchair to live from then on.

After carefully looking at the last petri dish, old man Huang Nian slightly shook his head.On the surface of the agar in the petri dish, there was a faint circle of inconspicuous hydrolysis traces in the center of a golden colony.

"Mr. Huang, this batch of 20 samples has the best effect." A young man wearing glasses carefully lowered his head, pointing to the petri dish in front of old man Huang Nian, "It is more troublesome to extract agar now. , The next batch of experiments will not start until at least a week later.”

"Experimental product No. 17 seems to have the best effect, but it is still far behind the real usable strain of Penicillium." Huang Nian covered the petri dish, and with the push of the students, he came to the room again. Next to the wall, he took out the wooden pole and pointed to a large white paper on the wall, only to see that it was filled with experimental data.

"The extraction of penicillin is actually not a sophisticated technology. The real difficulty is to find a suitable strain. Although it is more like a coincidence that Americans discovered penicillin in history, it still took nearly 20 years for the industrial mass production of penicillin since then. It took several years to find the most suitable female parent of Penicillium strain through continuous experiments."

Huang Nian smiled and pointed to a row of petri dishes on the test bench in the distance, and looked at a few young people assigned to this experimental department, sighing secretly.

"But Mr. Huang, we have been taking samples from various moldy plants for cultivation, and there are some samples with good results, but why do you always say it is not suitable?" A girl looked at the notebook in her hand a little nervously.

"Actually, what we have done is very inhuman... The penicillin samples used on Indian patients are more toxic than the antibacterial effect..." Huang Nian's eyes darkened a lot, and his mood was not very good. "The antibacterial effect of penicillin To find a strain with low toxicity and higher antibacterial effect, effective data can only be obtained through continuous clinical trials. Perhaps our sample range is still too small."

"I've searched everything I could find, and I've done more than 400 culture experiments... Isn't sulfonamide better? Why do we have to go to penicillin?" The young man wearing glasses muttered, a little frustrated.

"We have accumulated more knowledge than our predecessors, and we can avoid a lot of detours, but there is really no trick in finding high-quality penicillin strains except time, perseverance and luck." Huang Nian looked at the only one in front of him kindly. Young people majoring in pharmacology in colleges and universities know that such intellectual youths have committed a common problem in the scientific research industry, "You are studying pharmacology, the effect of sulfonamides is not one-size-fits-all, and it is easier to develop drug resistance... Many of our work , must be forward-looking, so as to ensure that the future will not be helpless."

"Ms. Huang, what can we gain by staying in the laboratory all day like us? They go to Europe, go to trade, and they all praise their results. Even the skilled workers in the industrial zone are more beautiful than us. Live comfortably and leisurely... Although there are a lot of supplies here, they are all for us to do experiments. What we really come up with in the future is also the production department and trade department that will continue to be popular, including the last berberine extraction process. We don’t get any benefit from the bounty of fooling people! What’s the difference between this and before crossing, or doing scientific research is not as good as setting up a street stall!”

The young man with glasses is not a hard-headed literary youth, but gesticulates a little excitedly.The people around all lowered their heads silently, seeming to agree.

Make a huge selfless contribution to the cause of human health?Or is it that berberine, penicillin and the products that appear in those factories are things that should appear naturally and are not worth paying attention to at all?

Old man Huang Nian was taken aback, looking around at the young men and women assigned to him as students and experimenters, bursts of uncontrollable sorrow welling up in his heart.

……

……

A few time zones away, Su Zining, who successfully completed his trip to the Netherlands, is sailing in the Bay of Biscay on the purchased sail Galen.

The Mayflower is still the flagship, followed by the 400-ton "Shepherd" that has already ordered some age, followed by the 280-ton "Goblin" and the 320-ton "Eden". It's a brand new ship, less than a year old.Now these three sailing ships purchased from the Dutch government are fully loaded with a large amount of textile cloth and industrial raw materials, as well as more than 300 European artisans or refugees who have undergone strict quarantine.

It was almost midnight, and the western wind blowing from the Atlantic made the crosswind fleet a little bumpy.Dressed in a thin shirt, Su Zining was still leaning against the side of the ship, relying on a weak windproof oil lamp on the deck, quietly looking at the western sea.

"Su Zining, why are you still on the deck so late today?"

A familiar voice came from behind, and the female translator Yuan Xinyi walked over with a suit jacket.The female interpreter, who had been dressed in palace attire during the trip to the Netherlands, finally changed into a Western-style dress that was relatively more convenient for her to move around.

"The Chinese clothes still look good..." Su Zining took the coat and didn't put it on. Instead, he looked at his companion a little bit and smiled faintly.

"What are you covering up again...you don't seem to be in a good mood?" Yuan Xinyi pouted, secretly happy, and then showed concern, "Why do you always look at the West? Do you want to go back to Manhattan?"

Quietly looking into each other's eyes, Su Zining shook his head slightly: "I was thinking, what can protect us through these years. I always thought that in the 17th century today, the Atlantic Ocean is the biggest guarantee, followed by the current Continental Europe war, but now I find more and more that my original thinking was a bit naive..."

"Isn't it? The places we passed by were full of refugees and beggars, and the war will last for 30 years!" Yuan Xinyi looked at the other party's serious expression strangely, "Aren't you always emphasizing these things?"

"Well, that's just where we've seen it so far. In the Thirty Years' War, there were also two European countries that were not affected or affected very little, but ended up benefiting - England and France. Even the Netherlands, if there is less containment , In a few years, it will also get rid of a lot of burdens."

Su Zining pointed to the west and continued: "Although Britain is now experiencing the historical disputes between the parliament and the king, their maritime policy has not been affected. The colonization of New England and Virginia has never been interrupted; France is even more Taking advantage of this 30-year war, the French have long established their first semi-permanent colonial trading post at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River in Canada, and the towns and forts of Quebec were also rough in scale many years ago."

"What do you mean?" Yuan Xinyi was a little confused.

"England and France will eventually sandwich our development space from the south and the north, and the Netherlands and Sweden will try their best to get in. And Spain is the old hegemon in the Caribbean region. The entire North America seems to be vast, but in fact we The living space is not as big as we imagined."

After Su Zining finished speaking, he seemed to feel that he was thinking too far, so he squeezed out a smile: "These are just the past history, maybe our butterfly wings are already changing these. But I am worried that this butterfly is also speeding up at the same time, which is not good for us. The change."

"Yan Xiaosong and you are working so hard for this, right? But how many of you really understand what you do? Maybe many people think you are showing off." Yuan Xinyi thought for a while and sighed slightly He took a deep breath, and then looked at the opponent's arm if there was nothing.

"Hehe, there must be someone who cares about the country and the people." Su Zining chuckled, then turned around and continued to lie on the side of the boat in a daze

Seeing that the other party didn't seem to have any reaction, it took a long time for Yuan Xinyi to recover, and walked towards the cabin with a trace of disappointment.Su Zining, on the other hand, continued to stand on the side of the boat in a daze.