Chapter 108: An Epidemic Is Spreading [2] At Dongpa's words, people immediately began moving in orderly fashion.
The Wonju of Bojewon was, in this area, practically no different from the elder of the most powerful household around.
That was no exaggeration, since he was close enough with the magistrate to address him as an equal.
And the physician whom that Wonju trusted most was Dongpa.
Naturally, Dongpa's words were treated as good as the law of Bojewon.
"All right, all right. Don't let them eat anything! Good grief... there goes another one!"
Making a tremendous fuss, Dongpa pointed at someone.
At the end of his finger lay a man who looked like he had become the very origin of the phrase "too weak to stand."
Even while lying down, he was still continually soiling himself with diarrhea, so there was no need to say how grave his condition was.
"What should we do?"
The two servants who had reached the man in an instant looked toward Dongpa.
Dongpa stared at the man and the servants with a deeply displeased expression.
To someone who did not know him, it would have looked as though he were engaged in some noble deliberation.
But Kanghyeok could tell.
As expected, that bastard doesn't know a damn thing.
The man did not even have the basics down.
Of course, diarrhea was filthy.
Even Kanghyeok himself would have preferred to avoid any job that involved rummaging through someone's shit.
But what could he do?
What he had learned was medicine, and medicine was the only thing he knew how to do.
If a patient comes in with symptoms of diarrhea, then you have to examine the stool first.
And if he could not look at it directly, then at the very least, should he not ask what it was like?
But Dongpa was not even going near the patients.
He merely stood there with his hands behind his back, shouting at the top of his lungs.
"What do you mean, what do we do? Move him away first!"
The place Dongpa indicated with his chin was the inner courtyard of Bojewon.
Just looking at it made the stench rise up. Countless patients in similar condition were already there.
With their family members and the people dispatched from Bojewon all tangled together, it was utter chaos.
"Yes, yes."
"Good grief, this man... his legs have no strength at all!"
The two servants tried several times to raise the man to his feet, then soon gave up and simply lifted him up.
In the process, part of the stool he had already passed dropped onto the ground, and Dongpa recoiled in disgust.
"Hey! Be careful!"
"Yes, our apologies."
Unable to say anything back to Dongpa despite his foul temper, the two servants hurried off carrying the patient far away.
"Scholar, I do not think this is anything ordinary."
"It certainly doesn't look like it. Everyone has their masks and gloves on properly, right?"
"Yes. We went through it during the smallpox outbreak, so we know it well."
Heo Jun nodded with a reliable smile.
Just as he said, the group had by now become fairly experienced when it came to epidemics.
After all, they had spent nearly a month fighting smallpox.
"Good. Then let us follow me and approach them. We at least need to figure out roughly what disease this is."
"Yes. But will Dongpa stay quiet?"
At Heo Jun's words, Kanghyeok laughed openly.
His face clearly said there was absolutely no reason to worry about a worthless thing like Dongpa.
"If he had done his job properly, I wouldn't even have stepped in."
"That's true. So it is a case of reaping what one has sown."
"You could say that."
With that, Kanghyeok strode straight into Bojewon.
Fortunately, Dongpa did not notice the group's movements at all.
That was because patients were continuing to pour in from the nearby slums.
"Get them inside first! Don't let them eat anything!"
Before the patients flooding in like waves, he did nothing but keep repeating the same thing over and over.
Like a parrot.
In the meantime, Kanghyeok was able to reach the man who had just most recently been brought in.
The people inside were every bit as frantic themselves, so none of them had the attention to spare for Kanghyeok or the others.
"Hmm."
First, Kanghyeok frowned and let out a low sigh.
Now that they've gathered them all together, the smell is truly no joke.
It felt like falling into a cesspit.
Which made sense, because nearly everyone surrounding Kanghyeok at that moment was producing stool in real time.
"Are you conscious?"
"Sir... please... save me..."
The man who had just soiled his trousers again spoke to Kanghyeok.
It was a sight so miserable it defied words, but a faint smile rose at Kanghyeok's lips.
At least he can communicate.
There was a great deal he wanted to ask.
Thinking that was something of a relief, Kanghyeok spoke.
"Since when has your stool been coming out like this?"
"Uh... mm..."
The man could not answer right away.
It seemed he had only been shitting without once seriously thinking about the phenomenon itself.
At times like this, the doctor had to help a little.
"Since when have you been passing stool more than four or five times a day?"
"Ah. That started the day before yesterday. Then now... urk."
The man rolled his eyes back in the middle of speaking.
Only after his body jerked a few times did he come to his senses again.
That unpleasant liquid continued to spill out, soaking the ground.
Steam was even rising from it, making it obvious that it had just been produced.
Without realizing it, Kanghyeok covered his nose and asked, "So now it comes out like... water, right?"
"Yes, yes. That's right. I haven't eaten anything since yesterday, and it's still like this."
"You haven't eaten, and it's still like this?"
"Yes. Truthfully, I couldn't eat much to begin with."
"How many times have you gone?"
"Since yesterday... almost twenty times? Thirty...?"
"That's a lot."
The man was probably telling the truth.
Was he not someone living in the slums of all places?
Even on days when he managed to boil some grass gruel, that would count as a day he had eaten well.
So it's diarrhea that continues even without food...
A few things came to mind.
If it's not viral, it looks like something caused by a toxin... but I'll have to take a look first.
It was something he truly hated, but there was no helping it.
After putting on one extra glove over the ones he had already prepared, Kanghyeok turned the man's body over.
The dirt smeared over him made the sight even more revolting.
Yeoju, whose stomach was weaker, promptly turned her head away.
She had not even dared think of lifting her brush from the start, so in a way, that was only natural.
"Let's see..."
Kanghyeok slightly lowered the man's waistband and examined the area.
For the patient, it was an assault from out of nowhere.
He flailed his limbs, but it did no good.
Since he had eaten nothing and had done nothing but defecate, he had no strength at all.
What was more, it was so dark inside the trousers that nothing could really be seen.
This won't do. No choice...
If he had been alone—or at least if Heo Jun and Heo Im had not been there—he might already have run away.
Would not anyone feel that way?
This was not just anything. He had to rummage through feces.
For fuck's sake.
But with two physicians standing there with their eyes bright, he could not turn away from the patient.
Kanghyeok squeezed both eyes shut and shoved in his hand.
Then he scooped out what remained inside.
No matter that he was wearing gloves, the irritation surged up at having to ladle out stool with his own hand.
In an instant, Kanghyeok turned back toward the group with a face like a wrathful demon.
Of course, his gaze landed mostly on just one person.
"Hey, what are you doing? Why haven't you spread the gauze?"
"Huh?"
Poor Dolseok became the one made to bear the brunt of it.
He felt wronged for a moment, but only for a moment.
"Can't you see what I'm holding right now?"
Because Kanghyeok was making a motion as though he might fling what he held in his hand at him.
Just looking at it was revolting enough—what would it be like if it actually hit him?
Dolseok had absolutely no desire to find out.
"Yes, yes. I'm spreading it right now."
"Hurry... this is dripping."
"Yes, yes."
At superhuman speed, Dolseok opened the house-call bag and began laying gauze out on the ground.
"That's it."
"Uh, I still haven't—"
"What?"
"N-no... nothing."
Brushing off the stool that had gotten on the back of his hand—even though he was wearing gloves—Dolseok lowered his head.
The one fortunate thing was that spreading the gauze on the ground was proving clearly worthwhile.
"Looking at it this way, it's very easy to see."
"Yes. The proper method is to observe it against a white background."
Kanghyeok replied as he peeled off one of the double layers of gloves he had put on.
Even while doing so, his eyes stayed fixed on the gauze.
Or more precisely, on what lay atop it.
There's barely any mucus or blood.
There was a slight smear of blood, but the color was too bright.
It seemed more correct to regard it as anal bleeding rather than intestinal bleeding.
That was the sort of thing that could happen easily when someone defecated around twenty times a day.
The most recent stuff is practically all water.
It seemed the man's claim that he had barely eaten anything was true as well.
What he was passing really did look little different from urine-colored water.
Hmm.
Kanghyeok knew several diseases that could cause diarrhea on this sort of scale.
The great drawback was that he had never encountered one directly.
Was twenty-first century South Korea not, after all, a developed country?
To see a large-scale diarrheal epidemic there was like plucking stars from the sky.
For that reason, Kanghyeok had no choice but to rack his brain desperately.
First of all, given that there are this many patients, it's not something caused by a toxin.
It was best to exclude the classic exam favorite, Staphylococcus toxin.
That was usually an illness that broke out when people had all eaten the same thing, like yeolmu kimchi.
In Kanghyeok's judgment, it would have been difficult for that to infect this many people at once.
Someone probably washed shit or vomit in the stream... and then everyone drank that water and ended up like this.
If so, it was more correct to view it as a viral or bacterial disease.
The question was which one.
"Do you know what it is?"
Heo Jun and Heo Im were also peering at the stool.
Heo Jun had even begun poking through it this way and that.
But the information they could glean was extremely limited.
This was still an era when stool was classified only as watery or firm.
The thought that there could be countless varieties of diarrhea likely had never even crossed their minds.
"I think I know roughly... but I'm not completely certain."
"Oh."
"Please give me just a little more time."
"Yes, yes. Of course."
Kanghyeok sank back into thought.
Recalling the old cram sheets he had memorized to death in his school days.
The representative diseases are... dysentery, typhoid fever, and cholera...
First of all, dysentery was out.
That one had to involve blood mixed in and a great deal of mucus.
It would never present as something pouring out like water.
Typhoid fever... I don't think it's that either.
After feeling the patient's abdomen and forehead, Kanghyeok came to a conclusion.
There was none of the characteristic splenomegaly or rash that should have been present.
And the fever was not that high.
This much fever could come just from dehydration.
That left only one possibility.
Cholera.
Everything fits perfectly.
Watery diarrhea, exhaustion, dehydration, vomiting, nausea, and abdominal pain.
These were symptoms being shown not only by this man, but by nearly every patient being carried in.
Just as Kanghyeok was reaching his conclusion, Dongpa shouted yet again.
"Don't let them eat anything!"
"But the patients say they're terribly thirsty..."
"If they drink, they'll shit. So don't give them anything!"
"Yes, yes."
The more Kanghyeok listened, the more furious he became.
Cholera, and he was saying not to let them eat or drink anything.
Was oral rehydration therapy not the internationally standardized treatment?
"First... I think I need to deal with that Dongpa."
"Why do you say that?"
"If these patients... aren't given anything, they'll all die. This isn't an illness where they stop shitting just because they stop eating."
"Ah. Then?"
"Makbong, Dolseok, Yeoni. Let's go."
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