Chapter 61: Chapter 061 Medieval Medicine
In the tent, Gro still lay on the ground, his wound continuously oozing blood. Nearby, Pandora seemed idle, constantly biting on the tip of the silver fork in her mouth.
Richard glanced over, took out a bottle of alcohol from his chest, and squatted beside Gro to start treating his wound.
Even in his unconscious state, Gro furrowed his brow as the high-concentration alcohol was poured, showing excruciating pain.
Richard, however, did not seem to care, handling the wound as if dealing with an inanimate object, coldly and meticulously.
After finally tending to the wound, Richard looked towards Pandora and stretched out his hand, palm up.
“What?” Pandora asked, puzzled.
“Give me what’s in your mouth,” Richard said.
“What!” Pandora frowned, refusing.
Richard replied with some helplessness, “I need it for a purpose, just temporarily. I’ll give it back to you afterward.”
After hearing this, Pandora was still reluctant but eventually opened her mouth, took out the silver fork tip, and placed it in Richard’s hand.
Richard took it, disinfected the silver fork tip and two blood vessels that he had taken from a horse corpse with alcohol, then fixed the fork tip onto the thinner blood vessel to make a needle and thread, and began stitching Gro’s abdominal wound.
Yes, stitching, surgical stitching.
Honestly, surgical stitching did not involve much high technology, it only needed an appropriate needle and suitable thread.
The needle was generally made from bone or metal—animal bone, fish bone, silver, copper, aluminum, all would do. Over the long course of history, many materials had been adopted for threads, including plant materials like linen, hemp, cotton, as well as animal materials like tendons, catgut, and arteries.
Generally, plant materials, since they could not be absorbed by the human body, required the stitches to be removed after the wound healed, which was troublesome and could easily lead to inflammation and infection. Animal materials were somewhat superior, as they could be absorbed by the body, eliminating the hassle of removing stitches later. However, various materials like tendons and catgut often needed some time and special treatment before they could be used. Considering all these factors, Richard opted for an artery, which was why he had killed a horse.
Killing one horse to save a man was, no matter how you looked at it, a good deal.
Of course, Richard knew that the man named Bill Caesar might not think so, since the horse was his.
Thinking this over, Richard started stitching Gro’s wound, which had temporarily stopped bleeding.
There are many focal points in wound stitching, such as layer-by-layer suturing from deep to shallow, starting from the free side then the fixed side, and keeping the needle spacing slightly smaller than the subcutaneous space.
Richard was well-informed about these matters, and there was little room for error in his operation. Soon, he had finished stitching the wound, restoring Gro’s sliced-open abdomen to its original state.
The nobles inside and outside the tent didn’t know what to say after witnessing the procedure, for Richard’s method far exceeded their understanding.
Stitching a sliced-open abdomen? This must be a spell, right? Yes, it surely must be a spell!
This is not merely because the Nobles were ignorant but rather because Medieval medicine itself was excessively crude and direct, with things like suturing wounds being almost non-existent.
In the Middle Ages, the most common methods of treating diseases and injuries involved bloodletting. Barbers, who were part-time Physicians, along with Priests and Monks, would do everything possible with rusty Scalpels to cut open your veins and bleed you.
Dizzy? No problem, just bleed a little.
Nauseous? No problem, just bleed a little.
Injured and passed out from blood loss? No problem, just bleed a little.
Is there anything that bloodletting can’t solve? A joke, it’s impossible. If there isn’t enough blood let the first time, then do it twice. If that does not work, put dozens or hundreds of Blood-sucking leeches on the skin for a vigorous bloodletting treatment. If you happen to die accidentally, well, don’t be mad— it certainly wasn’t the bloodletting’s fault, you were destined to die anyway.
Thus, many people who could have survived were literally bled to death by these half-baked Medieval Physicians, among them Nobles and even Kings. In modern Earth’s history, King Charles II of Britain and the later Founding President Washington of the United States were both bled to death in this manner.
Of course, if you feel bloodletting is too trivial and seek a truly capable and knowledgeable Physician to treat your illness, that’s possible too.
If your limbs have sustained severe trauma or infection, a famous Physician known as Liston’s Flying Knife will amputate them for you. As there are no anesthetics, in order to alleviate your pain as much as possible, he will saw off your limbs as quickly as he can. The most renowned case in modern Earth history involves this Physician, during which:
That day, while amputating a patient’s leg, he efficiently finished within two minutes. Perhaps not satisfied with just that, he accidentally also cut off the fingers of an assistant who was holding the patient, and even slashed the skin of a Physician who came to observe.
The observing Physician was scared to death instantly. Both the patient who lost his leg and the assistant who lost his fingers subsequently died of gangrene.
Thus, “Liston’s Flying Knife” achieved a 300% mortality rate with just one surgery, a feat unmatched before or after. With such a skilled Physician, any disease ensured that his saw left nothing behind.
Besides “Liston’s Flying Knife,” other renowned Medieval Physicians demonstrated their special skills: such as hanging you up and forcibly washing your stomach with water; prying open your buttocks and treating hemorrhoids with a hot iron; prying open your buttocks again to insert a needle for an enema; or, “busting open your skull, chiseling a few holes to alleviate the trauma from a severe head blow”…
In a Medieval-like world, if a person wanted to survive properly, they had to hope never to get sick or injured. If you inadvertently fell ill or got injured, it was best to avoid Physicians at all costs, or it was likely death.
Under these circumstances, although Gro was disemboweled and had not yet succumbed, the Nobles already felt he had no hope of surviving. Now Richard not only stemmed the bleeding, but he had also sutured the wound—this…
This must absolutely be the Wizard’s Spell!
Richard, however, was too busy to pay mind to the shocked onlookers. After suturing Gro’s wounds, he began preparing for a blood transfusion.
Turning his head towards the outside of the tent, Bill Caesar, who had been dispatched to find feathers, walked in holding a bunch of feathers, stopped a few meters away, gently placed them on a nearby table, then swiftly exited the tent, wary of attracting more trouble.
Richard did not say much, walked over to check the feathers, finally selected two that fit his needs, used a Sword he had obtained from Bill Caesar, and skillfully carved them into two hollow feather tubes, sharpening their ends into two sharp needles.
After sterilizing these two needles, he inserted them into one of the previously unused thicker horse arteries, thus creating a very primitive but functional blood transfusion tube.
Next, it was time to find a suitable source of blood.