Chapter 65: Antibiotics

Shi Ya came in and said, "Sanxue is dying! Come and have a look, maybe you have a way to save her."

Ma Shao quickly stood up and followed him out of the chief's hall.

Soon, they came to a wooden house.

There were already many people in the room, including Hongnv and Little Sparrow.

"Brother Shaozi, Sister Sanxue has been in a coma for a long time. Can you wake her up?" The little sparrow said immediately when he saw him come in.

"Let me take a look first." Ma Shao walked through the crowd and saw a young girl lying on the bed. She was fifteen years old and a little thin.

At this moment, Sanxue was lying on the bed unconscious, her face was sallow, her lips were dry, and she looked terribly weak.

Ma Shao reached out his hand and was immediately shocked - it was a high fever, and not an ordinary high fever, at least forty degrees.

As for the cause of the high fever, it was of course a postpartum infection. Sanxue had just given birth a few days ago.

Although Ma Shao had asked his tribesmen to marry late and repeatedly stressed that "early marriage leads to weak offspring", Sanxue was already pregnant before he proposed this, so he naturally couldn't do anything about it.

Sanxue's body was not strong enough, resulting in a dangerous delivery. After finally giving birth to the baby, she developed a serious postpartum infection.

Ma Shao had suffered a serious wound infection before, but his strong physique was obviously not comparable to that of ordinary people. As a weak postpartum woman, Sanxue's body functions were even more fragile.

It looked like she probably wouldn't make it.

Unless we have antibiotics, it would be extremely difficult to produce penicillin.

It is indeed not difficult to find some mold, but it is extremely difficult to extract clean penicillin from it. Even if it is extracted, the yield is still a problem.

Dr. Fleming discovered the magical penicillin in the 20th century. He spent a month but failed to extract enough penicillin for one patient. After that, he only produced a few kilograms in ten years.

This resulted in the price of penicillin being much more expensive than an equal weight of gold, even hundreds of times more expensive.

It was not until the end of World War II that penicillin production began to increase significantly, and it was exactly a century ago.

"…Teacher, have you ever danced?" Ma Shao was at a loss as to what to do.

"I've tried all the dances, but it still doesn't work, so I came to you." Stone Crow said, "Isn't there anything you can do?"

Ma Shao was silent for a moment, and finally sighed: "Keep the ventilation, don't block the room, and use more strong liquor to clean her body."

This is all we can do. I hope Sanxue can pull through.

Everyone also heard the hidden meaning of his words, and left with sighs.

Ma Shao also turned and left the room.

The little sparrow followed him from behind and ran to him: "Brother Whistle, is there really no other way?"

Ma Shao shook his head.

The little sparrow still didn't want to accept this fact. He hugged his arm and said, "Brother Shaozi, everyone says that you are the messenger of the Great Spirit. Think about what the Great Spirit has told you. There must be a way. Sister Sanxue is such a good person!"

"I'm not a messenger of God." Ma Shao blurted out, then paused, "At least, I don't believe I'm a messenger of God. I've never seen the Great Spirit, and the Great Spirit has never said anything to me."

The little sparrow lowered his head: "But, but..."

Ma Shao patted her head and sighed, "Birth, aging, illness and death are the most basic laws of nature. We have to accept them."

The little sparrow didn't say anything else. The two of them stood there and the air was quiet for a while.

Just as an awkward atmosphere was looming, Ma Shao's eyes suddenly fixed, as if he had noticed something.

Not far in front of them, at the door of a wooden house, there was a crop hanging that was somewhat rare to many Indians - garlic.

The garlic, of course, comes from Clark Township.

Since the discovery of garlic in Clark Town, some tribesmen would buy some from time to time and use it as a seasoning.

Looking at the garlic hanging on the door, Ma Shao's eyes gradually brightened.

Allicin!

Penicillin is not the only antibiotic. How could he forget this?

Allicin is also an antibiotic and is much easier to produce than penicillin.

More importantly, even if allicin fails to be produced, it will not bring additional risks, after all, garlic itself is a kind of food. In contrast, penicillin needs to be extracted from mold. If the extraction fails and the mold is brought in, and then it is used on patients, the consequences may be unpredictable.

Of course, as far as Ma Shao knows, allicin seems to be mainly used as veterinary medicine in later generations. For example, it is mixed into feed to feed pigs and fish. Its effect on humans should not be very ideal.

But there was no risk anyway, and the patient was dying, so why not give it a try?

"Brother Shao?" The little sparrow was a little frightened by Ma Shao's shining eyes, and waved his hand in front of him.

"Gather all the garlic in the tribe, immediately!" Ma Shao reacted and said hurriedly, "And a bag of strong liquor!"

The little sparrow was startled, then asked in surprise: "You have thought of a solution?"

Ma Shao said: "I'm not sure yet, but we have to move quickly, Sanxue may not survive tonight!"

All the garlic in the family was quickly gathered together, and the quantity was quite large, amounting to dozens of bunches.

"Crush the garlic, the finer the better." Ma Shao ordered, and the tribesmen got busy, beating the garlic into a paste with sticks on a clean wooden board.

Garlic itself does not contain allicin.

Only when it is crushed and mashed will the sulfide inside the garlic undergo a series of chemical reactions and eventually produce allicin.

There are many chemical reactions taking place, but the operation is actually very simple.

Just mash the garlic and let it sit for ten minutes to half an hour, and allicin will be produced.

Then it's time to collect allicin.

Allicin is insoluble in water, but soluble in some organic solvents, such as alcohol. So what Ma Shao needs to do next is to soak the garlic paste in strong liquor, changing a batch of garlic paste every hour to maximize the concentration of allicin.

This is very inefficient and troublesome to use. A better way is to use steam distillation to separate the oil and water to obtain high-purity allicin for direct injection, but I don't even have a flask right now, so this is the only way.

After changing six batches of mashed garlic, it was already night.

After absorbing the allicin from six batches of garlic paste, a small bag of liquor has turned yellow and is still a bit sticky due to the rough filtration method.

Ma Shao felt that it was about time, so he took the bag of wine to the room where Sanxue was.

The wine bag was opened, and several people in the room covered their noses because of the smell. The pungent smell of garlic mixed with alcohol hit them in the face.

"What is this?" asked Hongnv.

"A new medicine, you can call it 'garlic wine'." Ma Shao explained, "Good medicine always tastes bad. I hope this can help Sanxue."

"Sanxue is saved?" people asked in surprise.

Ma Shao sweated slightly: "No, I'm not sure yet, don't hold out too much hope."

He really couldn't guarantee the efficacy of such crudely made allicin. Moreover, even if it was highly purified, it couldn't cure all diseases.

Ma Shao carefully poured the wine into Sanxue's mouth...