CHAPTER 749: MOLDY SU QIU WINE, THE MORE YOU DRINK... EVERYONE, STOP DRINKING!

A Hospital in Another World?

Several heads crowded together to look at the results in the petri dish. A faint green light swept across, and on the previously clean, agar-coated glass plate, lumps quickly rose:

Milky white, creamy yellow, various shapes of clumps. At the top of each clump were small, clustered lumps, high in the center, lower around the edges...

"Wow, what are these?" Vigeland reached out to poke, but Garrett slapped his hand away. He stretched his neck to get a clearer view:

"Circles, flat lumps, or strange patches with blurry edges..."

"Granular, nodular, cauliflower-like," Garrett recited with a stern face. Vigeland looked at him blankly:

"Where’s the green?"

"???"

"Cauliflower! These things aren’t green at all; how do they look like cauliflower?"

We mean cauliflower, the white kind, not the green broccoli. Garrett thought gloomily, maybe it’s too cold on the Black Gate Peninsula to grow cauliflower, so the dwarves don’t eat it...

"The point isn’t that. Look, these bacteria are what’s breeding in your lungs, causing you pain. Vigeland, Obas, Eshelle," he called each name on the petri dish label:

"You all have these in your lungs! You’re all sick! Coughing! Thick phlegm! Some people get fevers! Night sweats! Severe cases even cough up blood, have chest tightness, chest pain—do you?"

As he called each name, a dwarf would silently lower their head, not daring to meet his eyes. Vigeland mumbled softly:

"We dwarves are as strong as rocks..."

"Strong as rocks, that’s what kept you working until now." Garrett reprimanded him with a stern face:

"Do you know what this disease does to humans?—The weak die in their teens; the strong live to their thirties, becoming frail, hunched, constantly coughing, unable to work."

Seeing the dwarves’ unanimous look of disdain, as if saying "only humans are that weak," Garrett intensified his tone:

"Moreover, this disease is contagious! It can infect your pregnant women! Your infants! Your wounded, weakened warriors! Your elders..."

Uh, actually, forget the elders. Given the dwarves’ habit of crowding in caves with terrible ventilation, any elderly dwarf would likely already be infected...

His increasingly severe tone made the dwarves shuffle their feet uneasily, finally quieting down. Vigeland, speaking on behalf of the group, asked:

"So how do we treat this disease? It’s too expensive to cure everyone with [Remove Disease]..."

Yes, it’s too expensive.

Whether it’s pneumonia or tuberculosis, as long as it falls within the healer’s knowledge and divine model, [Remove Disease] can perfectly cure it.

But [Remove Disease] is a third-tier divine spell, meaning only priests above level five can cast it, and they can only cast a few times a day...

And among a hundred dwarves, there wouldn’t be a single priest; among a hundred dwarf priests, there wouldn’t be a single third-tier priest!

The disease is contagious... Unless everyone is cured at once, curing a few here and there would just lead to reinfection...

Garrett, confident, looked at them. Of course, there’s a solution, otherwise, why would he have traveled all this way?

"Did you see?" He pointed to the blank spots in the center of the colonies in the petri dish, urging the dwarves to look closely:

"When cultivating the bacteria, I dropped some newly developed special medicine on parts of the medium. Where the medicine was dropped, no bacteria grew. This shows that this special medicine has an inhibitory and bactericidal effect."

"So we just need to use it?" Vigeland started looking around:

"How do we use it? Drink it? Spray it into the lungs? Or, like you treated us before, mix it with saline and infuse it into the lungs, then extract it?"

Garrett: "..."

Very good, the dwarves’ imagination is indeed active. But unfortunately, the mage tower hasn’t produced an oral version of streptomycin, as for spraying into the lungs or lung infusion...

How could you even think of that!

The principle of medical treatment is a bit like Occam’s Razor: Do not multiply entities beyond necessity. If intramuscular/subcutaneous injection suffices, avoid intravenous injection; if intravenous drip suffices, avoid intravenous push. If minimally invasive works, avoid surgery...

Lung infusion is a major surgery with high risks! Every time I perform a lung wash on you, I’m always on edge, ready for emergencies, several times relying on divine spells to pull through!

Moreover, tuberculosis is a contraindication for lung washing... Just because there’s streptomycin doesn’t mean you can directly infuse it into the lungs!

Must say, Mr. Vigeland’s rich imagination perfectly avoided the correct answer...

He took out another box from his space bag, opened it, revealing a set inside. A row of syringes, a bottle of saline, and a row of small glass vials with powder, lying in an icebox, kept cool.

The small glass vials were sealed with thin rubber, just as Garrett remembered.

"This medicine is for injection." Garrett said slowly:

"I need to calculate your weights to determine the dosage. One by one, weigh yourselves for me... Take off that iron wrist guard! Damn it, don’t take off your pants!"

Chaos ensued...

Mage Dunfrees, watching from the side, twitched his mouth. Now he understood why Garrett got along so well with the dwarves:

If it were him, he could never lower himself to interact so directly with the dwarves, laughing and cursing...—Hey, don’t kick!

Of course, Garrett wouldn’t actually kick. He’s not stupid, the dwarves are solid and muscular, kicking them would more likely injure himself.

After getting an idea of everyone’s weight, Garrett began to prepare the medication:

"Line up! One by one, roll up your sleeves, expose your arms! The thickest part of the outer upper arm! Vigeland, you first—hey, relax, relax!"

The needle slid on the skin, crooked... One needle wasted, one syringe wasted... No, wait, the needle can be fixed!

"Time is money, my friend!"

Garrett called out his little demon, tossing a gold coin over, then pointed to the needle and ordered:

"Goldie, fix it!"

Mage Dunfrees: "..." You’re a mage, a mage! Even if you’re not a transmutation mage, it’s not hard to use your mental power to straighten this needle!

If you can’t, can you give me the gold coin? I’ll fix it for you!

...Though, seeing Garrett throw a bunch of materials over and squeeze the little demon to the limit, he silently changed his mind...

Then, he watched Garrett flick his hand, casting [Greater Magic Weapon] on all the syringes in the box.

Mage Dunfrees was heartbroken again.

Ah, such extravagance! [Greater Magic Weapon] is a third-tier spell!

Even if it can enchant a whole row of small weapons at once, that’s no reason to waste spells like this!

Garrett picked up a new syringe. Draw saline, pierce the vial, inject, shake well, draw again. Then, holding the syringe, he approached the dwarves:

"Let’s try again." His tone was sweet, his smile sinister:

"Relax! If you bend my needle again, I’ll cast Weakening Ray! I don’t believe Weakening Ray won’t relax your muscles!"

Vigeland and the others didn’t dare breathe, offering their right deltoids one by one, getting pricked by Garrett. Seeing Garrett start to pack up, the last dwarf in line cheered:

"Finally done! Let’s go drink!"

"No drinking!" Garrett snapped his head up:

"After taking this medicine, absolutely no alcohol!"

Alcohol with cephalosporins, immediately fatal. Uh, though he wasn’t sure if this streptomycin-like substance could cause a disulfiram-like reaction with alcohol, but...

Better safe than sorry. Anyway, he made the medicine, so he decides whether they can drink.

He wanted to see who dared to argue with him, the discoverer of penicillin, lung washer for the dwarves, inventor of smallpox and rabies vaccines, advisor on streptomycin, about drinking!

Sure enough, no dwarf dared argue. Under Garrett’s hand-on-hip, cold-smiling, towering gaze, no dwarf even dared sneak off to drink.

The first dwarf to shout "done, let’s drink" reacted fastest, his eyes twinkling, he smiled and stepped forward:

"Honorable Mage Nordmark~~~"

"Say it straight." Garrett shivered, quickly casting [Endure Elements] on himself: "What is it?"

"How many in our mine do you think have this disease? Since you’re here, can you check everyone?"

That could be arranged. Garrett looked at him anew, nodding slightly. The dwarf dashed out:

"Line up! Everyone, line up! Bring a clean cup, spit in it, write your name! Mage Nordmark is here to treat everyone!"

Lining up, spitting, culturing bacteria (Garrett was sincerely grateful for this world’s magic for quickly cultivating bacteria), taking x-rays, identifying and screening patients.

Then, most middle-aged and older dwarves, as well as some younger ones, lined up to get a shot in the arm.

"Those who got the shot, no drinking! Two shots a day, I’ll leave the powder!" Garrett amplified his voice to reach the entire camp:

"One in the morning, one in the evening! For seven days! After seven days, I’ll come back to check the

treatment effects!"

Wails filled the air.