Gao Yi threw off his two long legs, took three steps and made two steps, and the three stairs and made one staircase, risking breaking his neck, and rushed downstairs. He was so excited, so happy, like anyone who suddenly had two billion dollars in his pocket—

What he had in his pocket was rifamycin, a more effective drug than streptomycin against Mycobacterium tuberculosis!

In the past century, tuberculosis has arguably reached its peak. The development of agriculture and the increase in productivity have led to a rapid increase in the population, industrialization, urbanization, crowded housing, poor ventilation, which objectively created the conditions for the epidemic of this disease. In Europe alone, a quarter of the population died of tuberculosis, Keats, Byron, Chopin, the three Brontë sisters who wrote "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights", and the number of celebrities who died of this disease can be said to be countless, just like asking how many celebrities died of cancer in the 21st century, which needs to be supported by big data to be counted.

In the twentieth century, 100 million people will die of this disease, and it will not be effectively curbed until the invention of the special drug streptomycin. Since streptomycin was invented in 1944, at least 90 percent of those 100 million people died in the first 50 years of this new century.

Gao Yi issued a huge bill of $20 per capita and a total amount of 2 billion for these 100 million people-

As far as he knew, the average wage in the United States at this time was $0.22 per hour, an average annual salary of $500 based on an eight-hour workday and one day off per week, and a British miner was 50 shillings a week, or 2.5 pounds, for 50 weeks a year, and an annual salary of 125 pounds, which was about 600 dollars in US dollars. For someone with this level of income, an occasional expense of less than 5% of the annual income, or about $20, is completely affordable.

In fact, the size of the entire market should be much larger than two billion, after all, there are always many more people who are sick than those who are dead. And some of these patients can afford to pay much more than a hundred dollars, Chekhov, Kafka, Schiller, Lawrence, Browning, Lu Xun and countless others who can afford to pay a thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars, have long been listed on the death list of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis has never been a disease of the rich or the poor, it treats everyone equally.

********

Back at Yaxian Residence, Gao Yi ignored everyone and went straight to the three-story pavilion. Now the whole attic has been converted into a breeding room, the beds in it are all erected against the wall, the furniture is also piled aside, the room is full of layers of bamboo shelves, on the bamboo shelves are small plates upside down, and the bacteria live on the beef soup jelly in these small plates.

Gao Yi walked to a room in the middle of the front cabinet, and there was a table of eight immortals under the dormer window, on which there was a microscope, which was his temporary laboratory. This room is also filled with bamboo shelves, but unlike the others, there are not only upside-down plates, but also half-cut potatoes, panna cotta in canned fruit bottles, and batter in crockpots.

For the picked colonies, Gaoyi will be placed on different media for culture. These shelves are kept in constant supply for five days, and those colonies that have been examined leave one sample and all the others are thrown away. There's no way around it, all the places that can be stacked are already full.

Gao Yi is already thinking about whether to rent all the seven beds on the second floor, and it is estimated that the proprietress also hopes so. But lately he has been tightening his money again, after all, his rent alone is now as high as seventy oceans a month, and if he covers all fifteen beds, it will cost almost one hundred and thirty yuan, which is equivalent to sixty percent of his salary. The remaining 70 yuan has to hire people, buy pear paste candy, and pay extra money to buy beef bones and oxtail soup for the proprietress, and if one is not good, he will go bankrupt.

Gao Yi rushed back this time to make a backup, in addition to potatoes and custard, this time he also used glucose, starch, soybean flour, and peanut flour that he was usually reluctant to put away, and made more than a dozen copies according to various recipes in different proportions. He also poured some beef broth into a small wine jug to make a petri dish that could be carried around, in order to prevent any unpredictable disasters from happening in Yaxianju, such as a fire or something, and burn his two billion to the ground.

By the time he was done, it was almost five o'clock, and he hurried downstairs and got into a carriage and hurried to Ridda's house. He changed his dress in the carriage, because he was going to leave directly from the school, so when the dress went out in the morning, he put it in the carriage.

The residence of the Lida brothers was in Xieqiao, that is, the junction of Nanjing West Road and Qinghai Road in later generations. Because it is located to the west of the racecourse, it originally belonged to the countryside, and the land price was cheap. However, because of this, there are quite a lot of mansions here, and Hartung Garden and Zhang Garden are nearby. In recent years, the price of land here has skyrocketed, more than tenfold.

The houses of the Rida brothers are connected together and cover an area of roughly thirty acres. Rida's younger brother John's house is in the English country style, with a bright wood façade, a steep slope roof, clay red tiles, a roof with dormer windows and a high chimney, which looks no different from an ordinary English house, except that the lawn and garden are very large. It can be seen that he is a more introverted person, and he does not show a little nouveau riche atmosphere.

Rida's house is a real mansion, typical of the French Renaissance style, all white, although it looks like a two-story building on the outside, but it has a wide base with an all-bright basement, so it is actually a three-story building. Up the staircase is a two-storey curved portico with Ionic columns on the first floor and a Taskan pillar supporting balcony on the second floor. The spiral grand staircase protrudes from the north façade and echoes the semi-circular hall on the east side and the curved outdoor staircase attached to it.

The living room for receiving guests is on the first floor, and there is a front suite before entering the living room, with brocade carpets hanging on the four walls and curtains around them. Two Indian servants stood on either side, one of whom took Gao Yi's coat, the other took his cane, opened a door, and then took a few steps before flashing to let him in, while his name was voiced from his mouth.

"Mr. William Goy Jr. has arrived."

The host was not behind the door, nor did he have any guests, and in front of Gao Yi's eyes was a series of empty living rooms with open doors. There was no one in the living room, but he felt a figure shaking, and when he looked closely, he realized that it was a mirror at work.

Even if he participated in countless banquets in later generations, Gao Yi encountered this kind of scene for the first time. If it weren't for the fact that he happened to have two billion bases in his pocket, he would almost be at a loss by this pomp. But now, his hand lightly pressed the small pot of beef soup on his chest, and suddenly everything became lighter.

Gao Yi calmly walked forward along the string of living rooms, not looking around, nor confused by the mirror, he walked straight forward firmly, until he suddenly found himself in a small living room decorated with flowers and trees, where two ladies were standing waiting for him, and one of them stretched out his hand.

"Lady Rida!" Gao Yi bowed and shook the hand, then said in French.

This is the main owner who invited him to the banquet today, and as for Mr. Rida, he has not returned from Tianjin.