Chapter 66

66. Fleming, Alexander Fleming (1)

****

The packet of cookies Istina had brought back was placed aside in one corner of the research lab. With a cookie in her mouth, Istina followed after me.

“Where are we going now?”

“To the storage room. I want to show you something important.”

This is the academy’s underground storage room.

Istina and I stopped in front of the warehouse door. A sturdy iron door locked tight with a padlock.

“Hurry up and finish your cookie. You need to wear a plague doctor mask to enter this storage room…”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Nope. Just dusty.”

And fungal spores float around in there too. As usual, we put on our plague doctor masks—then…

With a creaking sound, the warehouse door opened. Inside, bread was stacked everywhere.

It’s the bread I gathered to cultivate blue mold. If the conditions were right, instead of just rotting, the blue mold grew successfully!

Of course, it’s still just plain old blue mold. There’s no way for me to know which strains have antibacterial properties yet—we’ll have to test them.

“Cough, someone sure piled up a lot of bread here.”

“I did.”

Since it takes a few weeks for the blue mold to grow properly, these loaves were placed here quite some time ago. I’d almost forgotten about them myself.

But judging by this—it looks like they’ve grown well.

Now all we need to do is find the strain of blue mold that has antibacterial properties among those cultivated.

“Everything’s gone bad. What does that mean?”

“Istina, what color is this mold?”

“I don’t know… green?”

“That’s right, blue.”

Istina inspected the mold cultures.

“There should be a strain of blue mold somewhere in this warehouse that produces penicillin.”

“How will we find it?”

“It’s simple. We’ll culture each sample alongside bacteria in petri dishes. The dish where the bacteria doesn’t grow—that’s our golden goose.”

Istina let out a small gasp.

“You’re right! If we check each one individually, we’ll definitely find it—uh…”

Istina suddenly stopped talking as if she realized something. Well, sorry to burden you, but since I’ve already handled growing the blue mold, wouldn’t it make sense for you to take care of finding the right strain?

“That’s right. If we carefully examine each blue mold culture, we should be able to find the strain with the characteristics we’re looking for.”

“Yes.”

“Thanks for your help, Teacher Istina.”

“Yes…”

Istina sighed softly. Still, shouldn’t this task only take about a week? Since I’ve grown so many strains of blue mold.

Anyway, our short-term goal is this:

Find the strain of blue mold that produces antibacterial substances. This will be the first step toward the discovery and use of penicillin.

Though I say this every time I write a paper, this time it really will change the world. It did in my world too.

Please wait just a little longer, Professor Fleming. I’ll bring penicillin to this world.

****

Leaving the lab in Istina’s capable hands, I headed toward the hospital ward. I needed to check on Eleanor and see when she could be discharged.

This is the hospital ward.

A while ago, a nun named Eleanor was admitted here after being attacked by a monster. She underwent treatment for traumatic cardiac tamponade.

Since we haven’t figured out how to stop bleeding inside the pericardium, I was worried for a long time—but contrary to my fears, Eleanor was doing fine.

“Hello, patient.”

“Yes.”

“Have you eaten?”

Eleanor nodded.

“Do you still feel pain or palpitations around your chest?”

“No, I think I’m okay now.”

“Do you have a fever?”

“No, nothing like that.”

No sepsis then. We’ll need to wait a few more days to be sure, though.

“By the way, I didn’t get a chance to think about this yesterday, but can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“Did you really open the heart?”

“I opened the membrane surrounding the heart.”

“Is that a common procedure?”

Not in this world.

Until the medieval and even modern periods, most doctors believed that chest and abdominal surgeries would forever be impossible or useless.

If it were possible, they thought it would be extremely painful, difficult, and have a high failure rate.

Which was mostly true until anesthesia and surgical hygiene methods were discovered.

For this reason, heart surgery only started to be seriously utilized in the 20th century.

Eleanor might not have survived without pericardiocentesis. We might have had to perform an open thoracotomy to locate unknown vascular damage—or worse, leave her to die.

“It’s usually not done.”

“Phew… I’m so glad I came to you, teacher. If I’d gone to someone else, I might have died from my condition.”

Since physical compression of the heart isn’t something that can be solved with medicine or magic. If she had gone to another healer, she probably would have passed away that day.

I nodded.

“Oh, I heard from the knight academy students that many people owe their lives to you. Like the classmate with the broken arm, the one who lost part of his liver, and the one with bandaged legs.”

“That’s right.”

So stop getting injured, you bastards.

I don’t know what they do in their daily lives to end up in such a sorry state and get carried into the hospital all the time.

“Judging by your condition, Knight Eleanor, you should be able to be discharged tomorrow. If you feel unwell, come back to the hospital immediately, and remember to take your medicine regularly.”

Eleanor brightened and nodded. At least the procedure was successful, which is fortunate.

****

Knock knock knock.

Istina opened the research lab door at the sound of knocking. On the other side of the door stood someone who looked like a junior.

Could this be a new graduate student?

Istina tried hard to suppress her spreading smile. If she senses anything suspicious and runs away, that would be troublesome.

“Oh, hello junior. Please come in.”

“My name is Amy…”

“Come in and sit down.”

Istina left the door wide open.

Amy sat on the sofa in front of the research lab with a somewhat troubled expression. Hands intact, legs intact, eyes intact—this one passes inspection.

“Our lab is great.”

“Ah, yes.”

“We produce a lot of research results, and the professor is very kind and explains things well.”

“Wow, that’s good news.”

Amy nodded as if relieved. Istina smiled meaningfully.

“What do you usually do in the lab?”

“Our work falls into three categories: taking care of patients in the ward, participating in research, or attending/helping with lectures.”

“Ooh, sounds interesting.”

“Interesting… yeah, it’s interesting.”

To outsiders, it might seem interesting. Istina, however, has become accustomed to it and feels too exhausted to find joy anymore.

“What kind of research are you working on now?”

“Ah.”

Truthfully, Istina herself wasn’t entirely sure what exactly this research entailed. Cultivate fungi and extract bacterial-killing substances.

“We’re trying to grow fungi and extract a universal cure-all that kills bacteria from them.”

“Is that possible? That’s amazing.”

“Isn’t it?”

Amy’s overly enthusiastic reaction made Istina’s shoulders rise unconsciously. Though whether it’s truly possible, Istina herself didn’t know.

“Well then, we’re planning to start the penicillin research today. Since you’re here, Amy, please help us out. We’ll pay you graduate student wages.”

Amy nodded.

Three hours later.

Upon closer inspection, the task was straightforward. All we had to do was collect the blue mold from the bread stacked in the warehouse and inoculate it in the center of the bacterial culture medium.

The problem was, there was no way to tell which bread would yield results. And in the warehouse, literally hundreds or thousands of bread pieces, about the size of a fist, were piled up.

“The 581st…”

“The 582nd…”

“The 583rd…”

Istina glared at the hundreds of petri dishes piling up on the lab bench. Surprisingly, it might not take too long.

Maybe we’ll finish today.

Though fatigue is inevitable, at least it wasn’t a difficult task, so that’s a blessing in disguise.

“Does it always look like this?”

“No, this is specific to the research we’re doing now.”

“I see.”

“A few days ago, we treated the wounded from the monster hunting festival. One person is still hospitalized; we operated on their heart.”

“Do you perform heart surgeries?”

“Our professor does. To be precise, he didn’t repair the heart itself but incised the pericardium surrounding it. Still…”

Even to Istina, that seemed miraculous.

It’s strange.

While parts of the academic community are still arguing about the principles and processes of blood circulation…

“How many petri dishes are left?”

“We’ll fill a thousand.”

We’ll probably finish in about an hour of work.

The results of the cultures should be ready in two days. The professor said that about one in every 200 blue molds should produce a substance that kills bacteria.

“The 678th…”

“The 679th…”

“The 680th…”

Without much basis, Istina decided to trust him. Professor Asterix has never been wrong so far.

This will be a long and laborious task.

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