Chapter 2703: Tetanus from War Wounds

Manbao was already very experienced at digging out arrowheads, and very soon she had it out. She picked up the arrowhead and examined it, then, instead of shaving off some flesh and blood directly, the emperor, seeing this, said, “We have to suck out this blood, don’t we?”

Manbao answered yes, and was just about to call her students over when the emperor rolled up his sleeves and said, “I’ll do it.”

Manbao: …

Li Si could hear them; he let out two muffled whimpers and tried to spit out the cloth he was biting.

Manbao raised her hand and stuffed it back in, then said to the emperor, “Your Majesty, such righteousness.”

The emperor sucked the blood from Li Si’s wound, and it wasn’t only Li Si—watching soldiers were moved to tears, a surge of heroic fervor seeming to roar through their chests.

But just sucking out the poisoned blood was not enough.

This arrowhead was rust-spotted; that was deadly.

So, after Manbao stopped the bleeding, she thought a bit and still decided to write a prescription. She was rather troubled—this prescription she had only recently dug out from the Encyclopedia Pavilion, because lately there had been too many cases of arrow wounds turning to spasms, and she’d had no choice but to ask Teacher Mo for help.

In the end Teacher Mo found her a book, and from it she got several prescriptions. The two main ones: one called Jade Truth Powder, and one called cornelian cherry powder.

After changing medicines, the survival rate of wounded soldiers with tetanic symptoms improved somewhat. Those four who had been hit by rusty arrows and survived were all results of the new medicines; of course, quite a few people still died even after taking them.

The data was too sparse to calculate probabilities, but for now, it looked about half and half.

Manbao prescribed cornelian cherry powder. A student took the prescription and went down, then came back after a while and said to Zhou Man, “Teacher, we’re out of centipedes, scorpions, and stiff silkworms.”

Manbao sighed; they’d already used those up on other soldiers. They hadn’t prepared enough after all.

Without those ingredients, Zhou Man frowned and sank into thought, then said, “Switch to Jade Truth Powder, and add pseudoginseng and angelica.”

The student acknowledged and turned to leave.

The emperor asked her, “You’re short on herbs?”

Zhou Man nodded. “Jade Truth Powder is also missing one ingredient—stiff silkworm—but it’s still missing fewer than cornelian cherry powder.”

The emperor frowned. “Aren’t those scorpions and centipedes all poisonous insects?”

“Used properly, they’re medicine too,” Manbao said. “They can counteract toxins. This arrowhead is certain to cause tetanic spasms.”

With incomplete herbs, Manbao didn’t have a good solution either.

The student quickly ran back and said to Zhou Man, “Teacher, there’s still half a bottle of Jade Truth Powder in the pharmacy, leftovers from what was prepared before.”

Manbao immediately took it, opened the medicine packet, and sprinkled Jade Truth Powder directly onto his wound as a poultice.

She said to the emperor, “This medicine will only hold for at most one day. Even if there’s no cornelian cherry powder, this Jade Truth Powder has to be used continuously.”

The emperor turned to his guards and said, “Send people into Liaodong City to search for medicines, and have others urge the Ministry of War’s logistics. Why haven’t the imperial medical bureau’s medicines arrived yet?”

The guard answered and left, then grabbed a horse outside and galloped toward Liaodong City.

Manbao knew Li Si was a fierce general whom the emperor valued highly, so she couldn’t help quietly opening the mall, going up to search for medicines.

There were pharmaceutical agents listed there, and not very expensive—specifically for preventing and treating tetanic wounds. Of course, they didn’t call it “tetanic wound”; they called it “tetanus.”

The stuff wasn’t very costly, mainly because in the future this disease was no longer a problem. The technology tax was also low—Manbao figured it was because they already had cornelian cherry powder and Jade Truth Powder.

After some thought, Manbao put it into her shopping cart: if by tomorrow the herbs still hadn’t arrived, she would buy it.

If they did arrive, she’d try cornelian cherry powder and Jade Truth Powder first and see how they worked, and only buy the pharmaceutical agent if they weren’t enough.

Manbao glanced at Li Si on the bed, moved to tears and crying his eyes out, and thought that some of that gratitude really ought to be reserved for her.

But for the time being the emperor was indeed the most moving figure—he’d actually personally sucked the blood from Li Si’s wound, and many people were as moved as Li Si and were crying as well.

Zhou Man ignored whether they were sobbing or wailing, and led her students to dig out other people’s arrowheads.

As they worked, they discovered a considerable number of soldiers had been hit by rusty arrows just like Li Si. Manbao’s brows tightened, and she reported this.

The emperor pondered aloud, “Their military supplies might be running low.”

That was good news for them.

The emperor gave the order: “Have Qibi Heli rest briefly and then attack. They don’t have many arrows left.”

This was what the emperor and the generals worried about. As for Zhou Man, what she worried about was that they didn’t have enough medicine—no, not just not enough, they had none left. What should she do?

So many people—were they just supposed to watch them hang on and die off one by one?

Manbao was a bit agitated; she cursed the medicine transporters in her heart, then handed things over to the students. She turned and went to the pharmacy, frowning as she formulated a new prescription. She took saposhnikovia root, prepared arisaema, typhonium, notopterygium, Bai Zhi, gastrodia, chuanxiong…

She flipped through the medicine shelves and found that not only scorpions and stiff silkworms were gone, there wasn’t much cicada slough left either.

There was nothing she could do; she could only sigh and wander around the pharmacy, run the prescription through her mind, then turn to take cinnabar and turmeric, wrap up a big bundle of medicine, and hand it to the soldier in charge of decoction. “This is a new formula, for twenty people. Boil it in a big cauldron…”

After giving instructions, Manbao turned and went back to treating patients.

Without proper medicine, she just had people dig out arrowheads, suck out blood, stop the bleeding, then apply trauma medicine for bandaging.

The trauma medicine also had some therapeutic effect on tetanic wounds, it’s just that, judging from the data, the effect wasn’t as good as Jade Truth Powder and cornelian cherry powder.

Half an hour later, a soldier ran over to report, “Lord Zhou, the medicine you asked for has finished boiling.”

Manbao acknowledged this, turned back to her own tent, took out a clean medicine bottle, poured the purchased pharmaceutical agent into it, then handed the bottle to the soldier to add into the decoction.

Manbao watched him pour it in and stir, then said, “This pot is Formula No. 4. In a bit, just distribute medicine according to the tags.”

Any arrowhead dug out that showed rust, the soldier would be assigned Formula No. 4.

Even Li Si was given a bowl; after they poured it down, he fell into a drowsy sleep.

Fortunately, there weren’t all that many wounded of this type. Two cauldrons of decoction were enough.

Manbao let out a long breath. She was just about to relax a bit and ponder this newly created prescription—it had been drafted in an emergency, without proper verification yet, so she had no idea how effective it was.

But just as she picked up her brush, the drums outside started pounding; the army was attacking the city again. And this time the soldiers were even fiercer—word had spread to the front line about the emperor treating Li Si’s wounds personally.

The troops were all deeply moved, and went to kill the enemy with even greater disregard for their own lives, as if they all wanted the emperor to suck their wounds too.

Then, before dark, Heli led the army in breaking into Baiyan City.

Manbao was utterly astonished. “That fast?”

Heli hadn’t expected it to go so smoothly either—he’d been planning to besiege the city for two more days.

Still, breaking through was good news. He immediately led people to stabilize the situation in the city and sent others to report to the emperor.

The emperor remained in the medical tent and did not enter the city. Night had fallen, and a newly captured city was complex and unpredictable—he was not about to stand under a dangerous wall.

But the medical tent moved toward Baiyan City and set up directly outside the city gate. All the wounded were brought out of the city to receive treatment outside.