Blood pressure.
It's the core of the core among vital signs.
Think about it.
Have you ever seen in a medical drama someone urgently asking, 'Hey! What's the patient's temperature now?'
Whether it's the operating room or the emergency room, if the music is playing with string instruments being plucked—you know, that _jing-naeng jing-naeng jing-naeng_ sound—then without fail, almost certainly, they ask what the blood pressure is.
Even among the same vital signs, there are different levels of importance, that's what I'm saying.
"What are you thinking about so deeply?"
We had confined His Excellency the Doctor... no, we had settled him in the glass-enclosed room and were sitting and resting in the adjacent room.
Life after the center opened is truly the bee's knees...
If there's no special business like today, the afternoons are free.
It's marked as research time, and actually, our slaves... no, assistants, are extracting insulin from cow pancreases, but Liston, Blundell, and I are free.
Of course, Blundell's specialty is his specialty, so if a pregnant woman he's monitoring becomes critical, he has to run over, but today is a good day.
"No, it's just... I was wondering if there's room for improvement in our medical system."
"Improvement?"
Anyway, I was lost in thought about blood pressure when Liston said something, so I brushed it off vaguely.
Then he started looking at me, saying, "Improvement?"
Just a year ago, no, even a few months ago, something arrogant would have surely popped out.
Where could there possibly be room for improvement in the medical system of our great British Empire!
They were such nonsensical statements that even our benevolent Lord might strike me with lightning, but...
"There are plenty of things to improve."
"That's always on my mind too."
Is it thanks to the Lord?
Or is it thanks to me, a common... well, me?
I'm not sure, but these two 19th-century doctors have completely turned over a new leaf.
Saying it's full of things to improve!
This is unconditionally a good thing.
Isn't there a saying that meta-cognition comes first?
Someone who knows what they lack is bound to grow faster and more properly than someone who doesn't know what they lack.
"I see. As expected from you two older brothers... I feel reassured."
It's not an empty compliment.
I truly mean it.
I didn't expect proper ideas to pop out of their heads right at this moment.
But I said it because the likelihood of them supporting my talk was high.
"Well, I'm currently pondering a method for collecting blood."
Among them, Blundell said this.
Certainly, if that were achieved, it would be truly amazing.
The fact that whenever you need it, you find people and turn them into living blood bags to draw blood... This is... fucking...
The more you think about it, isn't it really inefficient and inhumane?
We try to keep it hush-hush, but I heard that recently, when a high-ranking person had an accident, another hospital forced a transfusion and someone died.
Because of that, lately, the cases referred to Blundell have increased even more, and consequently, the money earned has also increased, but...
Blundell is already dreaming of progress that far surpasses those guys.
I looked at Blundell with proud eyes, and Blundell, encouraged by my gaze, continued with what he was about to say.
"So, I tried adding some lead to the blood."
"Pardon?"
"That's a masterstroke."
"Excuse me?"
But... lead?
Why... lead?
And what does Liston know, calling it a masterstroke and all?
I turned my head at the maximum speed I could muster, alternating my gaze between Liston and Blundell.
Perhaps Liston easily read the question in my eyes, as he immediately grabbed my shoulder and spoke.
"Ahh... Pyeong, you probably don't know. You're still young. Haha. Don't they say in Joseon you don't drink wine?"
"Well... that's true, but. What does that have to do with anything?"
Blood storage, lead, and wine.
Listing them out, it sounds like the title of a postmodernist movie.
They have absolutely nothing to do with each other! I'm telling you!
This isn't beautiful, you know!
"Now, now. Look here. In our Britain, there's quite a connection."
Whether I was furious or not, Liston chuckled and started sketching a picture with his fountain pen on paper.
Perhaps because he has skilled hands, he drew a somewhat decent picture.
"The wine from those French fellows is good too... but isn't it too expensive? Compared to that, Spanish wine is cheap, right? So, we import a lot from there... but wine is a sensitive food, isn't it? They say it spoils easily."
"Ah... That's right."
There are no refrigerators now, right?
Because of that, there are many wines whose names have become synonymous with vinegar.
How do I know such a thing?
Joseph, my close friend, is from a family of winemakers.
"There's a secret to solving that."
"Ah... I heard there is such a method."
"From whom?"
"Joseph's father."
"Ahh. Right. Well, for supplies to places like London, there might not be a need... but he said he sometimes goes to places like Ireland, right? Then he must have definitely done this processing."
"What processing?"
I'd heard about it roughly.
But since it was an industry secret, and both Joseph and I were destined to become doctors, he said we didn't need to know useless things, so I didn't listen properly.
Actually, well...
Why drink wine in Britain?
You should drink whiskey.
To begin with, I'm not much of a drinker, so I had no interest at all, but because I was curious about what Liston was trying to say, I was now listening as intently as possible.
_'Surely he's not going to say something like, because the color of wine is similar to blood, they are the same... or because Jesus said in the Bible, drink my blood, so once it goes into the stomach, it's all the same... right?'_
Let me correct that.
It's less about curiosity and more about worry.
I'm so scared of what he might say!
Especially because just a moment ago, I had a moment where I believed, despite being born in the 19th century, he could become a 21st-century type of talent.
"If you add lead to wine, the sourness disappears and it becomes sweet. It doesn't spoil."
"Uh... Is that so...?"
"That's right. Actually, doesn't lead have that kind of property? It's a truly amazing metal."
"What... what property?"
Liston's words were completely different from my expectations.
But if you ask if that made me hopeful, that wasn't it either.
Lead...
Why would adding lead to wine make it sweet?
I'm curious, but I don't want to try tasting it.
Lead poisoning...
I know how terrifying that is.
Even now, in the 21st century, about 1 million people die annually from lead poisoning.
And this is a much-improved situation; apparently, up until the 1960s, in the US alone, over 50,000 children died from lead poisoning.
"Look carefully."
As I was having those thoughts, Liston pointed somewhere.
The reason I said 'somewhere' is that I couldn't precisely tell where he was pointing.
What is this?
Why is he pointing at our examination room?
"Look at this splendid white color."
"Ah, the white is pretty. But this... this... don't tell me?"
"Yes, there's lead in it. That's why the color remains so pretty like this. Look closely. Even if you splash water on it... it's waterproof, right? It doesn't rust either. Ah, but since this is wood, I should say it doesn't rot."
"Uh... Uhh."
My hands are trembling.
My tongue is getting tangled...
I'm truly speechless.
_'No, then...?'_
This examination room... all this white, it's all lead?
No, no way.
The outside of the house... also has a lot of white.
Was that... actually all lead?
_'Now that you mention it... Fuck! In a place as rainy as London... I was curious how painted surfaces could stay so well without peeling!'_
Suddenly, my heart is pounding.
It's not a panic attack...
That's feeling a fear of dying in an irrational situation, right?
Compared to that, the situation I'm in... this is...
"You're that surprised? I guess they don't use lead much in Joseon?"
That's what he says, looking at me with my eyes wide open.
Blundell also has a face that says it's no big deal.
No, he is excited.
For a completely different reason.
"Right, so I'm trying adding lead."
"Good idea. Haha."
That... must be stopped.
It's artificial lead poisoning.
Actually, looking at this painted environment, I guess I might already have some level of lead poisoning...
But stuffing blood full of lead into people's blood vessels is a completely different story.
This is murder.
Of course, there are plenty of murders happening for various reasons, so at this point, I wonder if there's any meaning in saying this, but...
"W-wait a moment!"
I was thinking about measuring blood pressure, and now this mess.
I'm curious about my blood pressure right now.
I wonder how high it is...
"Huh?"
"Why?"
"That lead thing..."
"Yeah."
"It's a good metal. A very good one."
"If you put that in blood, do you think the blood won't coagulate?"
"I don't know. Don't we have to try it to find out?"
Ah, so they haven't tried it yet.
That's a relief.
It'll probably coagulate.
If it doesn't coagulate, I'll have to stop them then.
Right now, no lie comes to mind to dissuade them, but...
Who am I?
I'm Master Bullshitter Kim Tae-pyeong.
"I see. Give it a try then."
"Right. I should. You have to try everything. The current blood transfusion method is incomplete, no matter how you look at it."
Let's think positively, positively.
Just the fact that Blundell started having such thoughts is something, right?
Of course...
I think I might have a fit whenever I see white from now on.
To think I was living surrounded by lead...
Surely there aren't other things besides paint?
_'There probably are... these bastards.'_
It's the 19th century, after all.
They're capable of anything.
Right away, with arsenic alone... they committed all sorts of imaginable, no, unimaginable things recklessly, didn't they?
"Ah, by the way. What were you thinking about earlier?"
It felt like a storm had passed.
It's not an exaggeration... if it's a lead poisoning issue, it's more than a storm, isn't it a hurricane or something else?
So, my mind was a bit gone, but as expected, I was the only one who was gone.
Our 19th-century gentlemen are utterly serene.
Liston, being especially outstanding among them, truly didn't change his facial expression at all.
Not that it matters; if you showed him someone dying of lead poisoning, he'd probably tremble in fear...
_'I should ask them to send me a death row inmate later.'_
Since I'm a reasonable person, I can't just do that to anyone, so I decided to wait a bit.
Above all, blood pressure.
I completely forgot because of the lead, but this is important, right?
It's not like I just got here, huh?
I've gotten used to it by now.
So, I too soon put on a serene face and said to Liston,
"You know the word 'pressure', right?"
"Of course. Who do you take me for?"
"That 'pressure' is a force that presses something, right? Like this."
"You are the one who needs to do exercise to build muscle strength, aren't you?"
It's hard to pretend to be serene.
Looking at Liston, you might think he's just a physics character, but actually, his mouth runs pretty badly too.
But looking at his face, my anger control kicks in immediately, so I ignored him and continued.
"There must be pressure applied to our blood vessels too, right?"
"Ah... I thought it was something else. That's called blood pressure."
"Huh?"
"What, you didn't know? That's been around for over 100 years, I think? We probably measured it around here before?"
"R-really?"
"Yeah. But what do you gain by measuring that?"
"Ah."
I looked at Liston with a face full of surprise for various reasons.
Liston?
He had his usual brazen face, as always.
Blundell was the same.
Once again, only I was left baffled.