Chapter Seventy-Five: Malaria Cure

As mentioned in the last episode, Gao Ding and his 5,000 men contracted malaria, and the wolf bèi fled back to Panyu City to join Liu Hou.

Fortunately, it is already winter, the temperature in Panyu City is low, and mosquitoes are rare, otherwise Gao Ding's doing this is likely to bring great trouble to the Shu army.

However, out of an abundance of caution, Liu Hou still isolated all the sick soldiers away from people, so that they were far away from other people's places of residence far beyond the range of mosquitoes.

At the same time, all the doctors accompanying the army were mobilized to search for and screen anti-malarial drugs. Since Liu Hou didn't know what the antimalarial effect of Artemisia annua looked like, he could only give a rough idea, and then asked the doctors to look for it like a needle in a haystack and do it.

It's a bit cruel and a little inhumane, but those patients, even if they don't get used to make it, are likely to die in the end, so there's no way around it.

The first thing to solve was the problem of refining the drug, because Liu Hou knew in advance that artemisinin was not heat-resistant, so the traditional decoction method could not be used.

As for cold extraction, Liu Hou did not find a suitable organic solvent, and in this year, the only organic solvent that can be found is alcohol in addition to edible oil. Edible oil is not easy to volatilize, it is difficult to extract, alcohol will induce protein denaturation, whether it will destroy the active ingredient of artemisinin, Liu Hou has no way of knowing.

After thinking about it, Liu Hou really couldn't think of any way to refine artemisinin, so in the end he could only use a method that was not a way, that is, to squeeze the juice of the fresh plants used to make it real, and let the patient try to drink the juice to observe the curing effect.

This cannot be said to be a good solution, because after oral administration, many ingredients will be destroyed after digestion by the digestive tract, making the drug more effective. However, under the current conditions, this is the only way to increase the dosage in the hope that enough active ingredients will be absorbed into the body.

The drug skips the process of animal practice and goes directly to the human body. In the 21st century, this would have been criticized for being indecent, but at this time, it is only natural to do so, whether it is a patient who is a real object or a doctor in the court, who will only praise it and not question it.

This is also a benefit of the old society. Liu Hou selected 500 patients and divided them into groups to drink the juice freshly squeezed from various plants.

Because Liu Hou mentioned the keyword "Artemisia", the scope of investigation was greatly narrowed, and the doctors found a variety of "Artemisia" plants, some commonly known as "Artemisia fragrant", some commonly known as "Stinky Artemisia", and more than a dozen kinds of plants such as Artemisia chrysanthemum and Artemisia bitter.

The 500 sick soldiers were selected and divided into a dozen groups, each of which contained a plant. They drink a good amount of fresh plant juice every day.

This is not freshly squeezed orange juice, but can only be regarded as freshly squeezed grass juice, most of these juices do not taste so good, especially what "stinky artemisia", "bitter artemisia" and the like, drink people straight to their stomachs.

Fortunately, they all knew that this was for their treatment, and no one complained, on the contrary, these soldiers were generally grateful. Of course, they had no idea that they were being treated like guinea pigs doing medical practice.

In addition to being unpleasant, these juices have some side effects, and many people have symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and body soreness and weakness. After all, traditional Chinese medicine is not without side effects, fortunately, most of the artemisia plants are not very toxic, only cause some general side effects, and only a few people react a little more.

Many doctors know that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince has learned a lot from Zuo Cixian Weng and have no opinion on his approach, but there are also many military doctors who are skeptical of His Royal Highness's insistence on using a unilateral treatment for the terrible plague of malaria, and some people have proposed some secret recipes to try to persuade the prince to adopt them, for example, one doctor offered an ancestral secret recipe:

5-10 grams of Bupleurum chinensis, 5-10 grams of skullcap, 5 grams of Zhimu, 5 grams of grass fruit, 10 grams of Fabanxia, 10 grams of elephant shellfish, 10-15 grams of Changshan fried in vinegar, 2 black plums.

Another doctor claimed that he could use a piece of white paper two inches wide and write "two black plums, two red dates, and beans (according to the age of the patient, write as many as you want, such as 10 at the age of 10 and 20 at the age of 20)", fold the paper, divide the men into left and women, and tie the note to the arm one hour before the onset of the disease, so that the disease will not attack.

The previous doctor should be blindly testing prescriptions with traditional Chinese medicine, and Liu Hou didn't dare to say whether it had any effect. But the latter is obviously feudal superstition, this practice is similar to the Taoist priest drawing talismans to cure diseases, it is obvious that this doctor cannot be a person from the medical school of the Ministry of Industry, it is possible that he was conscripted into the army on the way to the war.

Liu Hou did not discourage their enthusiasm, and even did not oppose the later practice, which was obviously feudal superstition. He encouraged them a few words, and claimed that one qiē should be based on facts, so each of them gave 20 patients to give them practical work, and let them try to cure them in their own way, and if they succeeded, they would be rewarded.

After this start, more than a dozen doctors came to Liu Hou one after another, wanting to try to treat malaria patients with their own methods. Since he had already done that before, Liu Hou was not good at favoring one over the other, anyway, there were many patients on hand, and all kinds of medicines in the army were still sufficient, so according to the precedent, each of them gave 20 patients to toss around.

In the end, more than 100 of the 500 patients who participated in the real yàn died, and it is not known whether they died of malaria or were poisoned by the side effects of the real yàn plant. Compared with the sick soldiers in the quarantine area who did not participate in the real yàn, the mortality rate increased a little bit, that is, this real yàn still paid a little price.

However, the cost was well worth it, because the doctors eventually found an effective anti-malarial drug - a "stinky artemisia" with small yellow flowers.

Because of the smell, this kind of "stinky artemisia" usually does not attract people's attention at all, and no one uses it as medicine.

This kind of "stinky artemisia" is very common in the wilderness, and the biggest use in ordinary times is to burn to smoke mosquitoes, and the Shu army also often picks this plant to smoke mosquitoes, and it is said that the effect is particularly good.

It is such a plant that is very effective in treating malaria, and it can be said that the cure rate is 100%, and there are no side effects. This is really a gift from God to mankind, and no one thought that such an inconspicuous roadside weed could deal with such a terrible plague.

As for the other doctors who claimed to have secret methods for treating malaria, their treatments actually failed. Needless to say, the feudal superstition is naturally needless to say, as for those folk house inspections, they are also mixed. Some don't work at all, some worsen the condition, but some do improve symptoms.

However, the best thing is to improve the symptoms, not to achieve the goal of cure. Since they were ineffective, these treatments were naturally abandoned, and the method of using the freshly squeezed juice of the goldenrod "Artemisia stinky" was finally unified to treat malaria.

For a time, the Shu army all over the mountains were picking this kind of yellow-flowered "stinky artemisia", fortunately, this yellow-flowered "stinky artemisia" is not a delicate plant, but a wild grass that can be seen everywhere.

Soon, the Shu army collected enough yellow flower "stinky artemisia" for 5,000 patients, and the malaria epidemic was finally controlled.

ps. One more chapter in the evening