Chapter 185: Three Divine Instruments (2)

Going back in time a little.

A few months before introducing Statin at the Quarterly Earnings Presentation.

Guild Master Gustav expressed his concerns about Statin.

"Director. But about this medicine called Statin. Will it really make money? How do we convince the public of the reason they need this drug?"

It was exactly the problem of how to sell Statin.

"Certainly, there was such a problem. Since people won't realize the necessity of Statin."

"To be honest, I know the medical utility of this drug too, but the necessity to use it... doesn't really hit home for me."

To sell a drug, people have to need it.

In order for Quinine to sell, they must fear malaria.

In order for Penicillin to sell, they must understand the concept of infection.

Like this, all demand naturally comes from necessity.

But Statin lacks that kind of demand.

It has no symptoms to be called a disease, and even if you take the medicine, you don't feel a change.

Who would want such a drug?

That was why the Guild Master was worried.

"Will the public really want this drug?"

"If even you, Guild Master, who understands the physiological effects of this drug, think like that, then the public probably won't use it either."

It was about whether this drug would actually sell.

Honestly, I had no choice but to admit it.

Imagine going to a patient with no symptoms and telling them it clears the blood and prevents future diseases.

How many people would believe such a nonsensical claim?

If we sold it as is, no one would buy this drug, right?

"Ugh... Then since this is a preventative drug, how about telling them to trust the Lord Saint and just try it, like a vaccine?"

"Wouldn't that be a lack of courtesy to those who trust me?"

Of course, it wasn't that there was no way.

I could tell them to trust what I have achieved so far and try taking it.

But that was a lazy idea.

The kind of lazy idea that a doctor should absolutely never entertain.

"Asking people to trust a theory I have proven and asking them to go along with my delusions are two completely different things, are they not?"

Every act of treatment must have evidence.

Pushing it through by saying it just feels like it works is an act no different from a Black Sorcerer.

And one more thing.

Strictly speaking, people don't believe in me without reason.

'They trust my rationality.'

The world isn't so naive as to blindly believe me if I tried to sell something like Yin-Yang Water.

...No.

Maybe by now, if I sold something like Yin-Yang Water, they might actually believe it?

Anyway.

The Guild Master's concerns were completely rational.

However, there was no need to worry.

"Guild Master. Could you host a demonstration?"

"A demonstration... you say?"

"People are bound to believe what they can see with their own eyes."

Because I had already anticipated this and prepared something.

"It has been a while since I proved the germ theory."

Proving an invisible existence was not a first-time occurrence.

Nor was it the first time proving an invisible causal relationship.

In fact, compared to when I proved germs, the situation was much better now.

Dyslipidemia merely lacked symptoms.

Surprisingly, it was an issue where the results were much more visible than germs.

'Even in my previous life, the proof itself was an easier problem than the germ theory.'

There was a lot of noise in the academic society while proving the germ theory.

However, the theory that cholesterol was the cause of the disease was accepted faster than expected.

The reason was simple.

While germs are invisible, the cholesterol problem is highly visible.

Therefore, I wasn't worried about the proof.

The Guild Master also nodded after hearing my plan.

"Certainly, with a demonstration method like this, even I would want to start using Statin right away."

"Let's hurry. The earnings presentation is only two months away, is it not?"

"Who are you planning to invite to the demonstration?"

"I will give you a list."

I handed over the list I had prepared in advance.

It was a list selected to include people who were desperate for Statin, while at the same time being influential enough to widely spread its effect.

And lastly, one more thing.

"Since it's a Public Demonstration..."

"Yes, I will call the journalists."

As expected.

The experience of working together for a long time hasn't gone anywhere.

We were on the exact same wavelength.

***

Sometime later.

The Public Demonstration was set to take place in the auditorium of the Cathedral located in the heart of the capital.

Yes, that place.

That auditorium where I proved the germ theory before.

When I asked Diocesan Head Lilac to lend it to me because I had something to prove this time, he willingly lent it.

"Of course I should lend it to you. I will absolutely attend the observation that day too."

For reference, there was a minor happening before the demonstration.

Letters pleading why they weren't invited arrived at the trading company from uninvited figures.

The contents were begging us to somehow make room, asking if I was going to announce a theory like the germ theory while leaving them out.

Even when I said it wasn't that grand of a theory, no one seemed to believe me.

So when I asked if it would be okay to stand and listen in the hallway, the reply came back that it was more than enough.

Thus, the day of the demonstration arrived.

The Main Auditorium was packed with invited figures, leaving no room to step.

The prominent nobles of the capital.

Renowned healers and major clients of the trading companies.

Seeing these kinds of people standing in the hallway to watch my demonstration, I realized my fame all over again.

I observed their facial expressions before stepping up to the podium.

'Are they all making half-belief, half-doubt faces...?'

Honestly, I couldn't tell.

I'm good at the observation of individual patients.

But with this many people, it's hard to read the atmosphere.

It turns out the ability to read the intention of an individual and the public are separate things.

At least thanks to the conversations Perisia picked up and relayed, I was able to roughly grasp that they were in a state of half-belief, half-doubt.

— "A drug that clears the blood? Is it something like bloodletting?"

— "I read the academic paper in advance, but since I'm not a healer, I didn't understand it properly."

— "Opinions are divided even among healers."

— "I don't know why I was invited to such a place when I'm neither a healer nor a guild master. Well, there must be a reason the Lord Saint invited me."

Roughly like this, a myriad of opinions were mixed together.

Below the podium, I could see Guild Master Gustav doing a dry gulp.

He looked nervous now that the demonstration was actually about to begin.

Seeing that, a small chuckle escaped me.

'I, the individual concerned, am relaxed, so why is the Guild Master acting like that?'

That was enough of reading the room before stepping up to the podium.

I stepped up to the podium holding the script I had prepared.

"Thank you for making the time to come despite your busy schedules."

When I gestured, employees pushed out carts loaded with large glass samples.

The auditorium murmured.

It was because of the contents inside the glass.

— "Good heavens..."

— "Is this your first time seeing one as a healer? You must have done plenty of dissections, no?"

— "The invitation did say something like this would appear, but... it's a bit bewildering."

Those were none other than specially preserved human organs.

I held up one of those samples.

Inside a transparent glass vial was a piece of a human blood vessel.

The aorta.

The thickest blood vessel carrying blood to the heart.

"Among you all here, you must have heard news of a perfectly healthy acquaintance suddenly clutching their chest and collapsing to a sudden death one day."

Several people in the audience nodded.

Sudden death.

It is a terrifying death for anyone.

I know it well because I died from it too.

"This is the surgical removal of the blood vessel of a patient who lost their life to that sudden death."

This sample was the aorta of someone who passed away in such a manner.

As I introduced that aorta, exclamations erupted from all over the audience.

Primarily the healers showed such reactions.

"The blood vessel is quite messy."

"It seems to be from those who passed away due to heart problems."

If it was a healer, they would recognize the difference between this blood vessel and a normal blood vessel at a glance.

No, even if one wasn't a healer, they would have no choice but to know that the state of this blood vessel was not normal.

The inner wall of the blood vessel, which should be red and smooth.

Clinging thickly to it were yellow lumps of fat that looked sticky to anyone's eyes.

I turned the sample to the side so the cross-section of the blood vessel could be seen well.

"Do you see it? These dirty residues were blocking the blood vessel. Those healers who engage in vascular surgery probably know it well by the name of a disease, atherosclerosis."

Atherosclerosis.

Simply put, it can be viewed as a disease where the blood vessels become clogged with grease.

This disease was precisely the reason I said dyslipidemia was easier to prove than the germ theory.

While germs are hard to see even after infection, fat is blatantly visible once it builds up.

"Those of you engaged in surgery will empirically know the fact that patients undergoing surgery for heart problems often have dirty blood vessels like this."

The healers nodded.

Seeing that, it seemed they were healers engaged in surgery.

Encouraged by their response, I introduced the other samples.

"This person suddenly slurred their speech one morning, collapsed, and never got up again. It was a stroke. And the blood vessel in their neck was in this form."

The second cross-section was also no different from the first.

The exact same yellow grease was blocking the blood vessel.

The third. The fourth.

I held up the samples one after another.

They were the blood vessels of those who suffered sudden death.

Their backstories were all different.

However, as if they had made a promise, the cross-sections all looked identically the same.

The auditorium fell quiet.

Fear was already dwelling on the faces that had been in half-belief, half-doubt just moments ago.

"...How horrific."

The one who uttered this sound was none other than a noble.

It was an effective presentation to the point that even a noble, not a healer, understood the effect fat had on the heart and brain.

'There's a reason they show the lungs of a lung cancer patient in anti-smoking advertisements.'

Humans are animals overwhelmed by sight.

It might be different for those who already smoke cigarettes.

But for those who hadn't smoked yet, there was no more effective smoking cessation tool than a photograph of lung cancer.

Looking at black-stained lungs, anyone's blood is bound to run cold.

This was also why I showed these blood vessels.

"This filthy residue blocked the flow of blood, and as a result, their hearts stopped or their brains burst."

If a sewer gets blocked, it will burst eventually.

There was no need to go out of the way to explain that principle.

Blood vessels are the same.

If a blood vessel is blocked like this, there was no need to explain the fact that it would burst one day.

I looked around the audience once.

Looking at the atmosphere, no one seemed to have a backlash against the fact that blood vessels could be blocked by fat.

It was different from germs, where there were those who had a backlash.

There was no one who could refute this blatantly visible thing.

'The setup is done well.'

Now it was time to move to the next step.

Just before the murmurs began to grow.

While the people were wavering, I immediately moved on to the next order.

"There might be some of you who think this is a rare disease that only happens to an unlucky few. But please take a look at this next and think again."

The assistants dragged two large iron cages onto the stage.

Inside were live, breathing rabbits.

"Here we have two groups of rabbits. For the past few months, one group was given greasy food, while the other was given only plain food."

I brought out another glass vial.

It was a rabbit's blood vessel.

The blood vessel of the grass-eating rabbit was clean.

In contrast, the blood vessel of the rabbit fed heavily with cholesterol was completely blocked with yellow grease.

It was the exact same state as the human blood vessels from earlier.

"Like this, as many of you have guessed, what you eat is bound to build up in your blood vessels."

I could see people in the audience feeling their own bodies.

Mainly those whose BMI figures looked high.

Among them, our Guild Master was also mixed in.

...You read this in writing beforehand prior to the presentation. Why are you acting like this now?

Anyway, the presentation continued.

"Now, let's broaden our field of view. You all know the Dwarf race of the northern region of the continent. They possess sturdy skeletons and robust stamina, and inherently, they are a race that lives as long as an Elf."

I wrote down the statistics for the maximum and average lifespan of Dwarves on the chalkboard.

"However, they have an abnormally high rate of failing to pass 60 years of age and dying of sudden death from a heart attack or stroke. People call this the Curse of the Earth."

When that name came up, several Dwarf guests sitting on one side of the auditorium flinched and raised their heads.

I pulled up the blood data of Dwarves collected by the affiliated healers of the trading company using the magical power analysis technique.

The figures on the red bar graph representing cholesterol levels were several times higher than that of normal humans.

It was three times the average based on humans, and reached fifteen times based on Elves.

"In the process of operating on Dwarves, I found out that atherosclerosis is heavily discovered in them. So, as a result of an investigation to see if there was a particular figure that was uniquely high in their blood, this figure was uniquely high."

"......"

"I decided to call this fat blocking the blood vessels cholesterol."

Strictly speaking, I didn't make the discovery of cholesterol in this way.

I already knew the existence of cholesterol.

In other words, it was closer to unfolding the correct answer sheet and explaining the problem-solving process.

But there was no way people would know this secret of mine.

To their eyes, it couldn't help but look like I had discovered the new concept of cholesterol based on the Dwarves.

In the middle of that, a Dwarf listening to the explanation carefully raised his hand.

"I am Rheindel, the Guild Master of the Dekel Workshop. I well understand the reason the Lord Saint invited me to be the representative of our race."

Dwarves have a strong tendency to gather in workshop units.

In other words, the master of a workshop was in a position no different from a family head.

Depending on the region, they even acted as the representative of all Dwarves in that area.

"If so, does that mean our race must cut back on alcohol and meat?"

"No. There are parts that make it difficult to simply conclude it like that."

It was the question I was waiting for.

In reality, before my research, I thought that was the case too.

Aren't Dwarves a race known to die for alcohol?

So I thought their eating habits were the problem.

But after doing research, that wasn't it.

"Of course, cutting back on alcohol and meat would be good. But even taking that into consideration, the specific cholesterol removal ability is much too low."

For that to hold true, Dwarves who don't like alcohol and meat should enjoy a long lifespan.

Of course, I wonder how common such Dwarves are.

But once searched for, there were at least a few hundred.

However, those Dwarves also lived short lives, without exception.

In other words, diet wasn't the problem.

"Dwarves racially seem to severely lack the ability for handling this cholesterol."

"Then, it must mean alcohol isn't the problem."

"Yes. Regrettably, it is."

Unfortunately, I had no choice but to tell the Dwarf representative the cold reality.

It was no different from a declaration that no matter how much they pursued improvement in their eating habits, it would probably have no effect.

The audience's atmosphere settled down considerably as well, seemingly realizing its meaning. Everyone briefly expressed their mourning for the tragedy on a race-wide scale.

However, the Dwarf representative's reaction was strange.

"Hmm. I see."

He looked somewhat satisfied.

"It means alcohol wasn't the problem anyway. What a true relief."

"......"

The audience turned icy cold.

At the same time, everyone was able to understand the Dwarf-style thinking.

'So that was the issue.'

It seemed the standard for the tragedy of a race we thought of, and the tragedy of their race, was a little different.

*

Anyway, the demonstration continued.

This tragedy was not just a problem for Dwarves.

Humans and demi-humans possessing a genetic constitution like Dwarves were bound to exist.

The families that uniquely died young from a heart attack or a stroke were prime examples.

And we had invited such families to this demonstration.

"Could our family also..."

"Was this the reason the Lord Saint examined our family's blood?"

Aren't there commonly cliché families out there?

Families that produce a lot of geniuses, but in exchange, live strangely short lives.

The family heads of the families I invited here were such cases.

"According to my investigation, their blood cholesterol levels are uniquely high as well. I have named this familial hypercholesterolemia."

Before long, the people were completely accepting my theory.

This theory that blood vessels could be blocked by fat.

In other words,

'Now is the perfect time.'

It meant the setup to introduce Statin was ready.

Fittingly, there was exactly one patient from whom we could expect a dramatic dramatization with Statin.

Statin is fundamentally a drug where the speed of the effect appearing is slow.

However, there is exactly one disease where the effect of this drug can be dramatically staged.

"Family Head, could you come up to the podium and speak?"

I pointed to an old man who had been murmuring in the front row just moments ago.

It was an old man who had been undergoing the clinical trial for Statin for one month.

The old man stood up while receiving support.

"Family Head. Up until just a month ago, weren't there times you suddenly lost consciousness and collapsed several times a day?"

"That is correct."

"Then, how about these days?"

At this, the Family Head took off his hat and spoke toward the audience.

"I can speak putting our count's family's honor on the line. Since I started taking the medicine the Lord Saint gave me, passing out in the middle of the day is gone. Now I can walk outside my bed without worrying about collapsing suddenly."

The old man's disease was TIA (Transient Ischemic Attack).

It's like a mini stroke.

It is a disease where stroke symptoms repeat appearing and disappearing even within a single day.

The cause is mainly atherosclerosis.

It appears when the carotid artery going to the brain is narrowed by fat.

Interestingly, this disease is the disease where the effect of Statin appears most dramatically.

Because if Statin is administered at a high intensity, the atherosclerotic plaque stabilizes, and the recurrence rate significantly decreases in just a week.

'It's the only disease that can be staged with Statin.'

Of course, the dramatization is a bit bland compared to Insulin or Penicillin.

Still, if a person who used to collapse 3 times a week can now walk around perfectly fine, isn't it appropriate for a dramatization?

And this plan of mine seemed to have worked successfully.

"...By any chance, Lord Saint. Would I need that drug as well?"

"It depends on your test result, Marquis, but considering your family history, the possibility that you need it is high."

"How about me?"

"I... What about me..."

As planned, the nobles and guild masters started raising their hands one after another.

It might be different for a commoner struggling to live day by day.

But the more money a person has overflowing, the more they crave a long life free of disease.

It's true even if they don't have a disease right now.

If the risk of catching that disease is high, they won't hesitate to use any means and methods for its prevention.

It wasn't for nothing that nobles rushed to get the vaccine one after another as soon as news spread that a vaccine could stop the curse.

Before long, demand for Statin began to emerge centering around the nobles.

I left them be.

The Statin demand would form centering around them now.

Everything was according to my intention.

'You can put down your worries for a moment now, can't you, Guild Master?'

Conveying that meaning, I looked at the Guild Master.

And I couldn't help but freeze for a moment.

"......"

"D-Director. I would like a prescription for that drug too..."

"Put your hand down. You shouldn't be doing this here, Guild Master."

Several days after that.

Statin was unintentionally subjected to promotion.

— [A drug whose reliability is guaranteed enough that even the Guild Master of the trading company selling it uses it!]

It wasn't my intention.

I figured this was also viral marketing and decided to let it be.