Chapter 100: A Divine Physician Descends Upon the Slums [3] Kanghyeok hurriedly rose from his seat.
The patient who had been in the middle of receiving treatment stammered in confusion, but what else could he do? An emergency patient had appeared.
This was the only moment when a doctor could turn away from the patient right in front of him.
No, the only moment when he had to.
"Uh. Sorry. I'll be back in a bit."
"Ah… yes, sir."
The patient had recently been complaining that his lower back had started aching badly.
He was lying awkwardly half-crooked on the mat.
Kanghyeok had just been in the middle of lifting one of his legs.
Because that test caused fairly severe pain, the man was grimacing.
To Kanghyeok, it was an expression that could easily have been mistaken for irritation rather than pain.
"Come on. It'll only take a second, so why are you making such a face?"
"Huh? No, sir. It hurts."
"Oh. It hurts? This does?"
"Yes. It hurts. There's a sharp tingling sensation."
"A tingling sensation? Hmm."
The test Kanghyeok had just performed was one he routinely used on patients with lower back pain. It was called the straight leg raise test.[2]
The doctor lifted the patient's leg while keeping the knee straight to see whether pain shot down the back.
A positive finding here meant that this patient, too, was going to be quite a troublesome case.
I only did it as a routine check, and he says there's tingling.
Kanghyeok found himself once again admiring his own clinical habits.
He had neatly diagnosed something that could easily have been dismissed as simple muscle pain.
As expected, I'm amazing.
In truth, it was thanks to the professors who had taught him that way.
Or rather, thanks to the senior residents who had bullied him from every angle, piled punishment duty shifts on him, and sometimes even kicked his shins while teaching him.
But as always, Kanghyeok gave himself the credit.
"All right. Don't leave yet. Stay here and wait. I need to run a few more tests."
"Ah… yes, sir."
Even while Kanghyeok lingered there for a few seconds, screams kept erupting from the next room.
"Aaaagh!"
It was such a vicious scream that anyone hearing it would think someone was being beaten to death.
Because of that, even the other people at Bojewon had started peeking around.
When they realized the center of the commotion was Dongpa, they began whispering among themselves.
"No way. Dongpa's supposed to be a famous doctor."
"Exactly. I've been taking medicine from him regularly too. If it's not Dongpa's medicine, nothing works."
If one looked carefully, there was a common feature among the people whispering like that.
All their faces had become round.
And the capillaries stood out so much that they were rather unpleasant to look at.
Kanghyeok shook his head and rushed into the next room.
Steroid abuse really is an easy way to be praised as a divine physician.
Had there not been similar mistakes even in modern medicine?
Fortunately, after side effects were uncovered through large-scale studies, measures had been taken to prevent misuse and overuse.
But in a world with no base of medical knowledge, once one saw effects like these, it would be hard for an ordinary clinic to stop.
Unless they witnessed a truly shocking acute side effect.
Like now.
Bang—
Kanghyeok threw open the tightly shut door to Dongpa's consultation room.
(In fact, this room had originally been meant to become Kanghyeok's consultation room.)
Inside the consultation room, which was only about half the size of the one Kanghyeok had been using, Dongpa stood there looking flustered, facing the patient, who was still writhing in agony.
"Wait, wait just a little!"
"Aigoo! I'm like this because that's exactly what I can't do!"
The two of them were doing nothing but bickering.
Apparently Dongpa had already inserted a few acupuncture needles into the patient's face, but they did not look the least bit effective.
Whatever the case, the patient's pain looked unchanged, or rather even worse.
"Hmm."
Rather than immediately stepping between them, Kanghyeok began by observing the patient.
Because the old maxim that all diagnosis begins with inspection remained close to the truth even in the twenty-first century.[3]
And besides, right now, when there were no special diagnostic tools available, a pair of sound eyes was the most reliable thing he had.
First of all… there are traces of vomiting.
He had been wondering why there was such a foul smell earlier, and now he saw vomit in one corner of the consultation room that looked as though the patient had produced it.
According to Makbong, the man had said his eye hurt, and now vomiting was accompanying it.
That alone made it clear this was no ordinary matter.
"Dolseok, go to Yeoju and bring me that… book."
"Which book do you mean, young master?"
By now they had been moving around together for so long that there was not just one or two illustrated books.
Most of them were books depicting Kanghyeok's procedures, but the book he was usually looking for was something else.
It was the book containing the kinds of medicinal herbs and their methods of use that he had learned from Heo Jun.
The moment Dolseok received Kanghyeok's glare, he realized which one Kanghyeok meant.
After all, why would Kanghyeok need the books illustrating his own procedures?
Everything in those was already in his head.
"Ah, yes, young master."
"Right. Hurry and bring it. You've gotten less quick on your feet lately."
"Oh dear."
Afraid he might get rolled up in a mat again, Dolseok hurried off at once.
In the meantime, Kanghyeok resumed his observation.
Hmm… even now he's clutching his head and eye. Just from his expression alone, the pain score is at least an eight.
A pain score described on a ten-point scale.
It was an extremely subjective assessment.
After all, the score was assigned only through the doctor's judgment or the patient's own statement.
And yet, unexpectedly, it was often quite accurate.
A person's facial expressions and body language were far more honest than their words.
An eight isn't low at all.
The patient seemed to be experiencing the worst pain of his life.
If it were a woman, she might at least have experienced childbirth pain—pain equivalent to a ten.
But it was not easy for a man to have that kind of experience.
Hmm. Dongpa really is a quack.
The last place Kanghyeok's gaze settled was on the medicinal decoction the patient had left unfinished.
Judging from the smell, the color, and the medicinal herbs scattered about, it was not difficult to guess what kind of decoction it was.
It was hardly an exaggeration to say the man had downed an entire bowl of steroids.
I've got the general picture now.
Only then, having reached a conclusion, did Kanghyeok slowly wedge himself between the patient and Dongpa.
Both of them resisted rather fiercely, but it was useless.
Compared with Kanghyeok's large frame, the two of them were like cicadas clinging to an old tree.
The only one still able to argue was Dongpa.
"No, earlier too—why do you keep barging into another man's consultation room and causing trouble?"
"Hmm."
Kanghyeok looked at Dongpa with clear disapproval.
Earlier, it had been the first time, so he had felt at least a little sorry.
And it had not been a truly urgent patient.
But this time, was it not an emergency?
He had not even one gram of intention to humor Dongpa's useless complaints.
"Hey, Dongpa."
"Yes?"
"Do you know who I am?"
"Huh? I mean, I know, of course…"
This was one of the methods Kanghyeok disliked quite a lot.
Crushing people outright with status and wealth.
But there were few methods that worked this quickly.
Especially on a man like Dongpa, whose courage was about the size of a mouse's testicle.
"Then keep quiet and stand over there. Unless you want a flogging."
"Yes, yes…"
In the end, Dongpa had no choice but to shrivel into one corner.
Unluckily for him, it was the corner where the patient's vomit had been spilled, a place with barely any room to set one's feet.
"Ugh."
Ignoring Dongpa's groan, Kanghyeok turned toward the patient.
The man truly was grimacing as hard as he could.
Both hands were wrapped around his eye and head.
"Does it hurt badly?"
"Yes, yes."
Even in the middle of nearly dying from pain, the patient had enough sense to realize Kanghyeok's status was no ordinary one.
He clearly looked like some important nobleman from Hanyang.
How else could he make Dongpa step aside with a single word?
"Come on. Take your hands away."
"Ugh. It hurts too much."
"I know. Covering it like that won't make the pain better, so take them away first."
"Yes, yes."
The patient removed his hands very carefully, as if his eye might roll out and fall the moment he let go.
Only then could Kanghyeok properly observe the eye.
"As expected. The eye is bloodshot."
At those words, Yeoni, who had remained silent until now, asked,
"As expected, young master, you already know what this is?"
"Of course I do."
As always, Kanghyeok nodded with a completely confident expression.
Steroids, bloodshot eyes, ocular pain and headache accompanied by vomiting.
If he had been given that many clues and still failed to get the answer right, he would not even be able to call himself a doctor in public.
Acute glaucoma. It probably also involves angle closure.[4]
Glaucoma.
Judging from the name alone, one might think it was a disease that turned the eyes green, but in truth it was nothing of the sort.
Within the cornea and the lens, a fluid called aqueous humor constantly circulated to provide nutrition, and glaucoma was the condition in which that fluid kept being produced but could not drain away.
In other words, it meant the pressure inside the eye had suddenly risen sharply.
So the treatment was simply to lower the intraocular pressure.
The problem was that this was quite difficult.
"Young master. I brought the book."
Dolseok came in together with Yeoju, both of them panting.
On the cover of the book, the large character for "medicine" was written.
After receiving it, Kanghyeok quickly flipped through the pages.
He had looked through it so often by now that he roughly knew where each medicine was.
"Diuretic… diuretic… ah, here it is. Oryeongsan."[5]
"Should I brew Oryeongsan?"
"Yeah. Alisma, Polyporus, Atractylodes, Poria, cinnamon twig. Those five are the core ingredients… and we should have brought them with us."
"Yes. I remember. Then I'll brew it at once."
Yeoju looked at the medicines Kanghyeok pointed out and nodded.
No matter how quick-witted Dolseok and Yeoni were, they still could not read.
So it naturally fell entirely to Yeoju to identify the herbs and brew them according to their proper use.
"Oh dear…"
Now he knew the cause, and the rough treatment plan had also emerged.
But the patient's pain remained unchanged.
Because in truth, nothing had yet been done for him.
"Bear with it a little. They're brewing the medicine."
"Yes, yes. Aigoo…"
"Oh, here it comes. They really were quick."
Just as Kanghyeok said, Yeoju and Dolseok hurried in with the decoction.
Kanghyeok immediately handed the medicinal brew to the patient.
"If you drink this, you'll feel a little better."
"Yes, sir."
The patient hastily gulped down the decoction.
Watching the rapidly draining Oryeongsan, Kanghyeok nodded.
This should improve things to some extent.
Oryeongsan was a fairly powerful diuretic.
Through repeated human testing and clinical trials, its effectiveness could be reasonably inferred.
So it was certain that the intraocular pressure would also improve quite a bit.
The problem was that this alone would clearly not be enough.
"Oh? I feel a bit better."
The patient muttered with a brighter expression than before.
The furrow in his brow had not smoothed out completely, but he still looked fairly satisfied as he nodded several times, only to show a troubled expression a moment later.
"Hm? I urgently need to urinate."
"Ah. Then go and do it."
"Yes, sir."
A short while later, the patient came back.
Compared to when Kanghyeok had first seen him, he looked incomparably better.
He kept bowing repeatedly toward Kanghyeok.
"Thank you, sir. Earlier, I really…"
"So, you feel a little better now?"
"Yes, yes. I feel like I can live again."
"Mm. But it still hurts, doesn't it?"
Kanghyeok asked while pointing at the patient's eyeball.
It was still red, which was not normal.
"Huh? Yes. That's true."
"It would be. This illness isn't that easy to deal with."
"Then…?"
"After some time passes, it'll hurt again like before. And if it goes on too long like that, you'll go blind."
"Blind? Aigoo, that can't happen."
The patient trembled all over like someone who had just been handed a death sentence.
And no wonder. This was the Joseon era, after all.
Even in the twenty-first century, the world was no easy place for a blind man.
Needless to say, that was even more true now.
"It's not as if there's no way."
"Is that really true?"
"Yeah. But it's a bit…"
"I'll do anything. Anything at all."
Kanghyeok looked at the patient bowing his head with the air of someone who truly would do anything.
Ah, damn it. I'm not confident when it comes to eyes. And it's not like I've got a laser…
He had never done it even once.
He had not even watched it on YouTube.
Ophthalmology was not his area of interest.
But what could he do?
The patient was on the verge of going blind right in front of him.
With an ah, screw it attitude, Kanghyeok threw out the words.
"We need to make a hole in your eye. Can you do that?"
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