Chapter Seventy-Four: The Plague

As mentioned last time, Liu Hou appointed Fei Yi as the acting Jiaozhou Assassin History, originally the best candidate for this position was Bu Qi, in fact, he had been doing a good job before, but, Bu Qi was newly surrendered, Liu Hou did not dare to hand over the land of Yizhou to him immediately, the key is that if he led the Northern Expedition, Lingnan would be equivalent to his back, and his back could only be handed over to someone who was absolutely trusted.

Fei Yi's loyalty is unquestionable, and his talent is impeccable, so Liu Hou is very relieved to let him be the governor, or the assassin history. He believed that Fei Yi would be able to govern Lingnan well, and in a short period of time, Lingnan would become the food base of the Shu army and become a strong backing for his Northern Expedition.

So, Liu Hou transferred Fei Yi and Bu Qi's positions, let Fei Yi serve as Jiaozhou Assassin (acting), and let Bu Qi do Fei Yi's original job in the Shu army.

In the past few days, the two of them have been handing over their respective work in full swing, and the Shu army has gradually withdrawn from various disaster relief and resumption work, such as repairing bridges and paving roads, helping the people build houses, and helping the people clean up the fields and resume production, and began to make preparations for the expedition.

Just as Liu Hou was full of ambition and preparing to go north to fight Sun Quan, his own soldiers came to report that Gao Ding was seriously ill and came back.

Liu Hou was taken aback, during this period of time and Bu Qi fought wits and courage, he almost forgot about Gao Ding, and only remembered after listening to the mention of his own soldiers, he sent Gao Ding to Hepu County to deter Shixie, so why did he come back? Could it be that Shixie has already surrendered?

Liu Hou suddenly remembered the report of the pro-soldier just now, which contained the word "seriously ill", and was taken aback again, and hurriedly asked the pro-soldier what was going on? The pro-soldiers were not very clear about the details, so Liu Hou asked the pro-soldiers to find someone from the Gaoding army, and he wanted to ask him personally.

The reason why he didn't go to visit Gao Ding in person was that he had a faint bad premonition, afraid that Gao Ding was suffering from an infectious disease, and there was a risk of being infected when he went to see him himself.

Soon, Gao Ding's deputy general came over, and after a visit, Liu Hou asked about the situation. Sure enough, as Liu Hou expected, a very terrible plague broke out in the Gao Ding Department, and 5,000 people fell ill, and even the coach Gao Ding fell ill.

According to the adjutant general, this plague is very strange, and the sick people will have intermittent onset, and at the time of the onset of the disease, they will have a high fever for an hour or two. The patient's forehead was very hot to the touch, but he himself felt very cold, and the whole person was shivering, swinging, covering a few quilts and even covering the fur was still cold.

But the strange thing is that after a fever for an hour or two, even without any treatment, the patient will sweat profusely and the fever will go away on its own, and then two days later it will have another attack, and so on.

At first, Liu Hou thought it was a mysterious infectious disease, but when he heard the deputy general's description, he immediately knew that this was not malaria.

Liu Hou had previously read about malaria on the billboards of the neighborhood committees. He learned from the bulletin board of the neighborhood committee that malaria and dengue fever are common tropical diseases in Southeast Asia, and they are transmitted by mosquitoes.

At that time, the country had a goal of eliminating malaria by 2020, so a lot of publicity materials were developed, distributed everywhere, and there were large billboards everywhere, and there were even a lot of public service announcements and special programs on TV.

Knowing that these people were suffering from malaria, Liu Hou immediately ordered all the sick people to be isolated in an uninhabited place within 10 miles. He knew that this disease was difficult to cure in this day and age, but there was still a way to prevent it.

The first step in prevention is, of course, to isolate the sick, which is a measure that all infectious diseases need to take. At the same time, he ordered the whole army to eliminate mosquitoes and prevent mosquitoes. However, as soon as he gave this order, Bu Qi came to him, saying that it was already winter, and the mosquitoes had long been extinct, and asked His Royal Highness the Crown Prince why he gave the order to eliminate mosquitoes.

Liu Hou was shocked to realize that he set out at the beginning of the year to attack Lingnan, and unknowingly more than half a year had passed, and the war was fought from spring to autumn. After the end of the war, the Shu army stayed to carry out disaster relief and resumption of production, and then carried out the reorganization of the army.

Panyu City is located in the middle of Jiaozhou, and the temperature is only about 10 degrees in winter, and mosquitoes will not come out at this time. Hepu County, where the Gaoding Department is located, is in the south of Jiaozhou, even if the beginning of winter has passed, the temperature is still quite high, and there are still mosquito activities, so there are still people who are constantly infected when they are in Hepu.

Before Liu Hou set out to attack Nanzhong, he expected that there would be many infectious diseases in the south, and a very important part of them was mosquitoes, because mosquitoes can transmit many terrible infectious diseases, so he took various measures early in the morning to prevent soldiers from being bitten by mosquitoes.

For example, everyone should wear long-sleeved shirts and trousers, and everyone should have a hat and light gauze for a head covering, with the aim of minimizing exposed skin.

In addition, a large amount of firewood and grass are collected in each camp, and the smoke is burned to drive away mosquitoes. There are also Hua Tuo who prepared some liquid medicines that are said to repel mosquitoes and distributed them to soldiers for use.

Therefore, the main force led by Liu Hou did not have many people due to illness, but the Gaoding Department was different, they were originally picking the remaining rabble, and the organization and discipline were far behind, and they did not seriously implement many very cumbersome health policies in the Shu army, so when they went to fight in the tropics, they finally couldn't resist the fierce mosquitoes and malaria.

Knowing the cause does not mean that Liu Hou can be treated, because the treatment requires drugs, and where does the medicine come from? Chinese know that artemisinin can treat malaria, but how artemisinin is made is not understood by everyone.

Liu Hou knows the basic principle, he watched a CCTV special program about artemisinin, and knew that artemisinin was invented by a Chinese scientist named Tu Youyou. The program also described in detail the process of the invention of artemisinin, which specifically mentioned that Artemisia annua recorded in the classics of traditional Chinese medicine has no antimalarial effect, and it is a plant called Artemisia annua.

What makes Liu Hou even more troublesome is that artemisinin is unstable at high temperatures and is easy to be decomposed. Therefore, to obtain artemisinin, you can't boil Artemisia annua like traditional Chinese medicine.

The program introduced that refining artemisinin requires cold extraction. Where to find suitable organic solvents for extraction in this era? Besides, he doesn't know how to extract technology, and even if he has reagents, he won't necessarily operate them.

In desperation, Liu Hou gathered all the doctors in the army, explained the situation to them, and told them that there was a herb called Artemisia annua that could cure this disease, and asked them to find this medicine.

However, Liu Hou had never seen this kind of medicine, and he couldn't describe what this herb looked like, so he could only irresponsibly ask them to find it themselves, and find more plants to make it real.

They all know about Artemisia annua, but no one knows about Artemisia annua, which blooms with yellow flowers, so they have to look for a needle in a haystack.