Chapter 337: Expedited Express

Chapter 334 – Expedited Express

Inside the parlor, Snow, whose mouth was dry from talking, took a large gulp of his drink.

Arthur, who was leaning against the sofa, on the other hand, was still thinking about what to do with Hadeskar.

From Snow’s description, Hudscale did have improper behavior that violated the Anatomy Act, but the means were not too drastic.

And the reason why the Liverpool authorities had delayed receiving the report about Hadeskar should not be that they were deliberately trying to hide this matter from Arthur, nor was it due to any kind of group crime, but rather, they really had not received any report about the report against this doctor who wanted to be salty at the moment.

First of all, Hudeskal had exchanged free treatment and medicine for the understanding of some of the patients’ families.

Secondly, the other part of the patients who were dissected were the ones he picked up from the streets, and since these people couldn’t find their families, naturally no one would go after Hadeskar.

As for whether Hadeskar had intentionally murdered patients for the sake of scientific research, judging from the current spread of disease in Liverpool, Arthur felt that the possibility was minimal.

According to the report of the doctors sent to Russia by the Central Health Committee to study the cholera epidemic last year: between 50% and 75% of cholera patients with symptoms of dehydration and not properly treated who are above moderate will die of shock on the first day of the disease, and the rest of those will die of other symptoms caused by shock within a week. Statistically, in the absence of medical intervention, the combined natural mortality rate for cholera will be as high as 50 to 66 percent.

In other words, the number of patients infected with cholera is so large and the death rate so high that the difficulty of finding such a body is not so high as to make it completely criminal to kill someone.

Instead of worrying about finding a corpse, Hudsucker should have been worried about whether or not he would contract this virulent disease with an alarming death rate by dissecting the corpse.

And I’m afraid this is also one of the reasons why Rosenberg didn’t choose to expose Hudsucker in the first place.

Although some of the doctors in Britannia had been claiming that cholera was caused by miasma, so the doctors in charge of treating the sick would not be infected due to the act of treatment.

However, according to the data Arthur had learned from the Liverpool Board of Health, while it was true that the infection rate of doctors was not high, there was an alarming cascade of infections among the group of caregivers who were responsible for taking care of the sick and cleaning vomit and bedding sheets.

Hudsucker’s medical ethics were indeed questionable, but the fact that he could insist on dissecting a patient under these circumstances at the very least showed that the man’s obsession with turning over had overridden his fear of death.

He desperately wanted to take off his pharmacist and surgeon hat in this medical pyramid of internists, surgeons and pharmacists, and move towards the authority of the medical profession, the sparsely populated internists who were only responsible for diagnosing and prescribing diseases.

However, it did not matter what Hudsucker thought now; what mattered was that his presence had made Arthur realize that there must be many other fellows like him in Britain at the present time who were in dire need of turning over a new leaf, and who did not hesitate to resort to radical therapies.

The research papers on the importance of salt supplementation in The Lancet and the London Journal of Internal Medicine were not numerous, but there were always a few. Since Hudeskal was able to notice this and try to treat his patients by taking IVs, surely someone else among other doctors could have picked up on it as well.

The key question now is how to get the Central Board of Health and the Chancellor’s Office to recognize this as a proven treatment option.

Knowing what is right is difficult, to be sure. But even harder than solving the answer is proving to a world of solidified perceptions why it is right.

His furrowed brow gradually relaxed as he recalled the defense Hudsucker had just given.

He suddenly spoke at Snow, who was holding his glass apprehensively, “Mr. Snow, could you please tear a blank page out of that book just now and give it to me? I still want to write a letterhead.”

“Sure.” Snow tore off the paper and handed it over, carefully asking, “And to whom do you intend to write this letter?”

Arthur pulled out a pen and buried his head in his writing, “Lord Brougham, Chancellor of the Royal Court.”

“Ah ……” Snow’s face went white with fear, “You still don’t intend to spare Mr. Hudsucker?”

“With regard to Mr. Hudscale, I neither intend to spare him nor to hold on to him. While dissecting a corpse is not a crime, illegally possessing it is. Under the Anatomy Act, however, that offense has become as much in nature as the unlawful occupation of another’s property.

As long as Mr. Hardeskar is willing to pay the fine, then the matter can be passed over procedurally. But if he can’t pay it, I’m not going to prosecute him, seeing as he’s provided a whole new way of thinking.

But not prosecuting him also means I won’t protect him. Since he wants to enjoy the benefits of breaking the law, he also has to bear the consequences of staying outside the law. If, in the meantime, a patient’s family launches a violent attack on him, the Liverpool authorities will not be in a hurry to deal with the assailant.

If Mr. Hudeskal does get the understanding of the family as you say, I think he will get through this period unscathed. And after that, although this allegedly illegal paper of his still cannot be published, I will personally make some financial compensation to him.”

Hearing this, Snow’s hanging heart finally relaxed.

Although this couldn’t be considered the best outcome, it was better than the revocation of medical license and loss of both human and financial resources that Rosenberg was talking about.

After solving this problem, Snow finally began to think about his own personal problems.

The parlor was silent, with only the sound of Arthur’s rustling writing.

After considering left and right for a long time, Snow suddenly pulled out a report from his arms and placed it on the desktop.

“Mr. Black …… Hastings, I don t mean to want to bother you, but can you take a look at this when you have time?”

“What’s this?” Arthur looked up at the document.

Snow stammered, “That …… is a bit of my personal research, of course, I know that as an apprentice apothecary, using the word research is perhaps a bit too much of a to-do. But I think the conclusions of the report might help a little in the fight against cholera.”

Arthur unfolded the document and scanned it; rather than a document, it was a map, a map with small red dots, and the information was almost identical except that the areas marked by the red dots were slightly different from the one Arthur was holding.

Arthur’s eyes slowly widened as he stared at Snow and asked with a smirk, ”How did you come up with using this method? Could it be that you have also done city mapping work before?”

“I …… learned it from a medical journal.” Snow boldly opened his mouth, “I once read in the London Journal of Internal Medicine that Mr. Valentine Seaman of the United States once drew a map of the scene of a disease outbreak to analyze the cause of the yellow fever outbreak in New York City in 1798.

The article was unremarkable, but the name New York intrigued me, New York, New York, and I thought at the time that I knew what Old York in Britain looked like, but I had not seen what New York in America looked like.

So I gave that article a good read. So when cholera broke out in Liverpool this year, I began to follow Mr. Seaman’s method of analysis, and in my spare time assisting Mr. Hudeskal visited the local parish priests and asked their permission to let me look at the sickness of the parishioners.”

Arthur briefly flipped through the statistical survey report bound together with the map, and it had to be said that although Snow was just an ordinary apothecary apprentice, this report of his was much more professional and detailed than Arthur’s survey report.

Although this report might still be a bit juvenile in the eyes of true professionals and medical researchers. But precisely because of the little bit of unprofessionalism revealed in this professional, laymen like Enchanter Lord Brougham could understand it better.

Arthur put that map and report away and rushed to Snow and promised, “Mr. Snow, congratulations, this report of yours will be submitted together with my letter to the case of Lord Brougham, the Royal Chancellor of Great Britain, the chairman of our school board and the highest overseer of the nation’s healthcare field. I am sure he will be very pleased that our University of London is about to reap the benefits of such a distinguished figure as yourself.”

No sooner had Arthur said this than Snow nearly spewed the gin in his mouth into the fireplace.

He covered his mouth and couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

In just this little time of meeting with Arthur, he had already reaped the promise of entering the university’s medical school to further his studies, and was about to have the attention of the one who held the highest power in the field of medicine in Britannia.

This kind of good thing is no longer a pie in the sky to describe, Snow only felt that the world is raining gold, and all the gold is still hitting the top of his head.

Snow covered his forehead and only felt that the whole world was spinning as he opened his mouth, “Mr. Black …… Hastings, I’m sorry, I’m not usually like this. It’s just that today, your words …… ah, no, it’s this gin that’s just too intoxicating.”

Arthur just laughed and stood up and patted his shoulder, “Young man, this is only where it is, the intoxication is still behind. Yorkers are born to do great things, the son of a York hired farmer can be a pig farmer and a superintendent of Scotland Yard. So it’s not too much to ask for the son of a York miner to be a professor of medicine. But you must bear in mind that you are very fortunate and have a bright future ahead of you, so don’t try to emulate your teachers, you just need to take one step at a time.”

Snow nodded excitedly and repeatedly, “Of course, Mr. Hastings, I’ve taken your words to heart. But ……”

Saying this, Snow again hesitated a bit as he stared at the letter in Arthur’s hand and asked, “Is it true that you didn’t ask the Chancellor to deal with Mr. Hudsucker?”

Arthur just smiled and shook his head, “Of course not, I just sent a request to him, hoping that he would grant permission to temporarily transfer Mr. Augustus de Morgan, who has just joined the University of London as a professor in the Department of Mathematics this year, and the students under him into the Central Board of Health to be in charge of mathematical induction.

You have discovered by statistics one possibility of the causative source of cholera, and I for my part hope that the Central Board of Health will utilize the resources at hand to get the local boards to do a good job of medical statistics, and that we shall know not only the number of cholera patients, the mortality rate, and the rate of recovery, but also whether the disease of the sick people is mild, moderate, or severe.

Of course, what I would like to know most of all is what treatments the doctors are using for their patients who are divided into the different stages of the disease, and which treatments are the most effective.”

At that, Arthur pulled open the door to the parlor and handed the letterhead to the guards waiting outside.

“Tell Postmaster Edward that this letter must be on the desk in Chancery Hall by sunrise tomorrow.”

……

The night was dark, and the waters off the harbor of Liverpool glowed with a little fishing fire.

Rolling white waves came in and lapped at the fishing boats laden with their catch.

The hull of the boat rose and fell, and even the crew standing on the deck followed the bumps up and down, looking as if the butterflies were dancing.

The captain, whose face was paralyzed, held on to his hat and pulled half of his mouth out of the cabin.

He lifted up the monocular and brass binoculars and scanned the dark ocean around him, and while observing, he instructed the sailors at the top of his voice: “Little ones! Keep your heads up! Liverpool recently flew into an owl, along with the Royal Navy’s lazy people also learned his habits of day and night. Now run the ship can not be so easy to write before, a careless not good will be put into the bureau squatting hard kiln.”

The sailors adjusted the height of the sails while asking, “Chief, I heard that a few days ago the Royal Navy’s inshore cruisers opened fire offshore and cut holes in Henderson’s ship, is there such a thing?”

“More than that, Russell and the boys seem to have had bad luck as well, they sailed from the Isle of Man a while back and were passing through Cornwall when they happened to run into the Black Clown, which was returning from the Ivory Coast on orders. To say that those guys from West Africa back can be really ruthless, they do not open a gun, raw by the speed of the bite your ass, the distance is close to jump directly on your ship, not give you a chance to escape. Russell they did not resist for a while, even the cargo with the ship all handed over.”

“Boss, we won’t get into trouble with them this trip, right?”

The captain put down the binoculars and glared at them fiercely, “Bullshit! What kind of business are Henderson and Russell in? What kind of business am I in? Henderson and Russell’s backers are just a few importers and the Customs Department, at most, they have a little relationship with the city hall. And I’m directly behind the Royal Navy, all peacefully doing their own thing. Colonel Jefferson of the Royal Navy has told me that the route is safe to-day, and as long as we can dock before the sun comes up there will be no trouble.”

The captain’s words had just spoken when, suddenly, a few lights suddenly flared up on the foggy sea.

The smugglers were blinded for a moment by the dazzling lights.

Immediately afterward, they heard the sound of orders coming from the sea ahead of them.

“Colonel Jefferson, target vessel sighted ahead, enemy has arrived at three hundred yards effective firing range!”

Only an arm snapped downward under the lights, “On my command, ram the horns for impact!”

Rumble!
A puff of smoke rose from the sea.

After the sound of cannon fire, only a heartbreaking cry of rage could be faintly heard.

“Jefferson, you two-faced villain! Black on black? You’re actually fucking playing dirty with me?!”

(End of chapter)