The big man has a living father

Chapter 78 Medical Research
Yi Shuo pulled Huo Hai aside and asked expectantly, "Master Huo, what are those rules of yours for?"

"Did you know that after implementing these regulations, the incidence rate would be greatly reduced?"

Huo Hai suddenly realized that this was the reason.

Yi Shuo: "Since the ban on urinating, defecating and spitting, the number of people suffering from diseases in each neighborhood has dropped by more than 60%."

Huo Hai was curious: "How did you know?"

Yi Shuo began to show Huo Hai the content of her work over the past few days.

It turned out that after Huo Hai transferred them here and issued new regulations, they had never come to the government office since then.

When Yi Shuo arrived, she didn't know what to do. She only knew that the newly appointed second lieutenant would be in charge of hygiene issues.

Since no one showed up, Yishuo could only arrange things for himself.

Everything, including the specific implementation of raising the black flag, was arranged by Yishuo alone.

Since there was nothing to do, Yi Shuo simply wandered around the entire Chang'an County.

Speaking of which, Yi Shuo's life experience is quite special.

When Yishuo was very young, her parents were framed by Cui Fuzhi, the highest official of the Imperial Medical Bureau, and both died. The newly born orphan Yishuo was taken away and adopted by Xu Shanyou, a folk doctor and a close friend of her father.

Yishuo was gifted and intelligent, had a special interest in medicine, and was determined to become a doctor.

However, as a woman, and with her adoptive father's resolute obstruction, Yishuo thought that her adoptive father stopped her from studying medicine because of her being a woman, so she could only learn medicine secretly.

During the plague ten years ago, her adoptive father became seriously ill because he went to the epidemic area to treat the disease. Before he died, he told her his life story. After learning the truth, Yishuo became more determined to inherit the family business. After that, she became a disciple of Zheng Wukong, the first famous doctor in Chang'an, studied medicine hard, and saved people. For a time, she was known as the female Bian Que.

In order to learn higher medical skills, she entered the palace. She experienced oppression and persecution, and was imprisoned several times. She remained neither humble nor arrogant, and worked as a wet doctor, female doctor, and female attendant physician. She was finally canonized as a female imperial physician by Emperor Wu of Han.

His master Zheng Wukong was a highly skilled doctor and a great trainer, so his students were all over the world. Most of the famous doctors in Chang'an today were his senior brothers or even his nephews.

Yi Shuo finally left the palace, and of course he wanted to visit his senior brothers whom he hadn't seen for several years.

However, Yishuo soon discovered something.

In previous years, the transition between autumn and winter was a peak period for people to fall ill. She had thought that her fellow disciples would be very busy and were ready to help when they visited.

As a result, when he visited Chang'an County, he found that most of his fellow disciples had few visitors and were not busy at all.

This is totally different from previous years.

Won’t the people of the Han Dynasty get sick this year?
So Yishuo continued to visit his fellow disciples in Wannian County.

My goodness, my fellow brothers and sisters in Wannian County are so busy!
Chang'an and Wannian, is there any difference between them? Is it the wind or the water?
Yishuo quickly identified the variables.

"It's pee and sputum!"

These days, Yi Shuo did some research and found that it was true.

Because of the poor sanitary conditions in several li, even in Chang'an County, the number of sick people was higher than in other li.

Yi Shuo investigated for a long time under the pretext of flying a black flag, and further confirmed his guess.

Seeing Huo Hai now, Yi Shuo couldn't help but ask this question: "Master Huo, did you know that after implementing these regulations, the incidence of the disease would be greatly reduced?!"

Huo Hai smiled and said, "Isn't this a very simple truth? Doctor Yishuo, you don't think that the people of the Qin Dynasty made it illegal to spit or urinate anywhere because they were looking for trouble, right?"

In fact, many laws of the Qin Dynasty were scientifically sound, but the policy of keeping the people ignorant was implemented while promoting these laws with complicated reasons behind them, which meant that they were destined to be regarded as harsh policies.

Yi Shuo was stunned for a moment and murmured, "That is to say, the medical officers more than a hundred years ago already knew all this, so why didn't they write it down in medical books?"

Huo Hai: "Then may I ask, how many doctors can read?"

Yi Shuo suddenly realized that, let alone ordinary people, even many medical officers could not read. How could they read medical books?

Because they cannot read, many doctors rely on memorized prescriptions to travel around the world.

Huo Hai didn't care about it at all. He brushed the dust off his sleeves and said, "What's the use of knowing it? What's the use of writing it in a medical book? In a few decades, those who know it will be dead, and the disciples will only want to learn the recipes to make money and don't want to know this nonsense. The medical book will be lost again."

"I still don't know."

Yi Shuo grabbed Huo Hai's sleeve and said, "This is a matter of life and death! If fever is like this, then what about epidemic? What about epidemic? That will kill many people!"

"If everyone knew this conclusion, it would save a lot of people."

Huo Hai: "Unless everyone can read, will they understand what you are saying?"

"As a doctor, you should study how to treat diseases, and study diseases that have never been seen. As for how to let people know about these things, that is another matter."

Without Zhang Zhongjing's "Treatise on Febrile Diseases", doctors of this era would have had no idea what fever or exogenous symptoms were.

However, after learning the method, Yi Shuo, with the empire's structural machine in hand, can study fever and it shouldn't take long for him to come up with something similar to Treatise on Febrile Diseases.

To summarize the Treatise on Febrile Diseases, three things must be met: the right to access large amounts of case data, the ability to write a book, and the money to support someone to do the complicated task of writing a book. Yi Shuo undoubtedly did not meet these three requirements.

But it would be enough if Huo Hai gave her some of the authority.

Yi Shuo: "Lord Huo, do you mean that I should study fever in depth and find out what it is?"

Huo Hai smiled and said, "Of course, if we know how fever and epidemics break out, can we prevent the outbreak of fever and epidemics from the source? Also, how should people who are already sick be treated? Shouldn't we study these things clearly?"

The biggest problem facing Chinese medicine doctors today is that they know how to cure diseases, but they don’t know why these medicines work.

Because traditional Chinese medicine is like a huge collection of wrong questions, from which the formulas are deduced, but no one knows what the root of the formulas is.

This results in the situation where when you see a problem, you know the answer, but you don’t know how the answer was calculated.

In ancient times, all of this was actually correct. Due to insufficient means of observation, it was impossible to conduct in-depth observations and research. However, observing more cases could provide answers on how to treat the disease.

Now that we have the answer and can cure patients, what is the point of researching the cause?
Because of all this, Chinese medicine’s ability to treat diseases was unique in the ancient world, and it can be said that it can cure anything.

But in modern times, it seems to have deviated from science as a whole.

The so-called integration of Chinese and Western medicine should not be a combination of the traditional Chinese medicine system and Western medicine methods, but a combination of the ancient medicine system of accumulated experience and judgment and the modern medicine system of observing and studying diseases.

The former is more like adding some antibiotics to a pill made of Chinese medicine. Doesn't it depend on luck whether it works well? If you are unlucky, it means that the shortcomings of both sides are combined into one.

The latter is a dual advancement based on the combination of empiricist backward reasoning and research-based forward reasoning, which can deal with the disease faster and more accurately.

Huo Hai could only give Yi Shuo some advice: "I have some retainers who are also doctors. They are studying some very strange phenomena."

Yi Shuo looked at Huo Hai in confusion.

Huo Hai: "They found that when any kind of food spoils, it can produce mold spots of all kinds of colors."

"But some different foods grow mold of the same color after spoiling, and they look the same."

"Then why do the molds on oranges and tangerines appear different, but the molds on oranges and noodles appear the same?"

Yi Shuo's eyes widened: "Could it be that the cause of these mold spots is not from the food itself, but from outside."

Huo Hai smiled and said, "So, they moved the mold from the rotten things to the things that were not rotten yet, and guess what happened."

Yi Shuo: “What else?!”

Huo Hai: "All fruits and foods can rot and produce mold spots, but the mold spots cannot be observed at the beginning. So is there something invisible to the naked eye that harms the freshness of food?"

"Is mold the result of a large accumulation of these invisible things? Just like a grain of sand cannot be seen at a distance of ten feet, but a pile of sand can be seen?"

"And do these things also affect the health of humans or animals? Or...are they the cause of illness?"

Yi Shuo suddenly realized, has anyone already started studying these things?
Huo Hai: "If you want to do research, you can also bring your fellow apprentices to do research together."

Chang'an is so big, and there were so many sick people in the past, so there were many doctors.

But as the health environment changes, many doctors will lose their jobs.

They have two choices, one is to be transferred to local areas to continue practicing medicine.

One option is to switch from clinical medicine to research medicine.

Seeing Yi Shuo's face full of longing, as if he had seen the Tao, Huo Hai reminded him: "First of all, you are still a medical officer, and I have transferred you here to be responsible for the management of Chang'an County, so you have to complete my work first, and then study other things."

"I have issued some new regulations, including some agricultural research results. You'd better pay attention to them."

Yi Shuo was surprised: "Is this also a similar study to medical mold stains?"

Huo Hai: "Will crops not get moldy or sick? Chang'an County is going to promote a new pig farming method on a large scale. As for the reasons, they have already been announced."

"You should be responsible for the statistics and publicity and promotion in this area."

Yi Shuo nodded: "I understand, Master Huo."

Huo Hai was about to slip away after he finished speaking, but Xiang Xu walked in with someone.

When the man came in, he bowed and said, "Master Huo, someone stole your carriage!"

Huo Hai tilted his head: "Steal my carriage?"

The man nodded with certainty: "We have already pinned the person down, right in the noodle shop!"

Huo Hai remembered what happened: "..."

The man danced with joy and excitement: "He stole from the lieutenant, isn't this a provocation to our Chang'an County! Lord Huo, how about we hang him up and beat him?"

Huo Hai: "Xiang Xu, go back and save them."

If word gets out that someone was beaten to death for buying a car from Huo's Car Dealership, how can this business continue? !
(End of this chapter)