"Claiming water is safer than alcohol, what kind of nonsense is this?"
A formal letter of protest arrived from Parliament.
It was called a letter, but an actual Member of Parliament came.
This happened after I had amputated about 20 of people's precious parts, thud thud.
One might think it happened just a day later...
But it was actually about five days later because I was genuinely doing my utmost to delay or prevent amputations.
Most of those 20 amputations happened early in the week, and thanks to rumors spreading that drinking alcohol after circumcision could be dangerous, and that a botched circumcision could lead to losing one's penis, there had been almost no need for amputations yesterday or today.
"Hmm."
For diabetes treatment, for a long time now, I only personally handle truly important people, and among the others, I only see the confusing cases.
Even this workload has drastically decreased since talented subordinates like our John Snow and Colin have become proficient with diabetes, to the point that I sometimes have free time even in the mornings.
Well...
It's called 'free time,' but my mind was always filled with worries about the future of the British Empire and people's health...
But to others, it probably looked like, 'That Kim Taepyeong guy seems to have some free time now?'
But that's all wrong.
My mind is still busy as hell.
'Is saying "drink water instead of alcohol" something worth getting this riled up and rushing over for...?'
It's not that alcohol has no positive effects at all.
You know, there are sayings like a glass of red wine a day is good for health?
But it's dangerous to take that at face value without question.
Everyone has different levels of alcohol-metabolizing enzymes.
An amount that might be good for one person could be fatal for another.
Moreover, chronic consumption like now doesn't help anyone.
"So water is safer than alcohol? Are you saying alcohol is dangerous?"
"Hoh... Are you really Sir T.P. Young?"
If I were my former self, I would have prostrated myself the moment I heard he was an MP.
One might say this is too much of a shift from weak to strong...
But 19th-century London is a world where you could die if you don't act that way.
For the same reason, I could hold my head stiff and high.
As he said, I'm no longer just a doctor, but a 'Sir.'
Although it's the lowest rank of Baron, and a non-hereditary title at that...
Whatever the case, I've become a proper noble of the British Empire, that's what I mean.
"That's correct. So it's right for you to listen to what I have to say."
Thinking that, my neck and voice naturally gained strength.
In contrast, the MP seemed to shrink back a bit.
It couldn't be helped.
I wasn't just a simple Baron.
I am the close friend of the 'Man Who Castrated Himself,' Duke Jamie, who has recently gained notoriety in London; the person who provided the 'cap' for the 'Man Who Defied God,' Duke Adolphus... and the leader of the unique medical team for William IV himself.
Of course, in addition to this, the countless rumors swirling about me were enough to make my opponent feel intimidated.
"Even so... No matter what, the superiority of alcohol over water is common sense passed down since Roman times!"
"I'd like to cite Galen's comparative anatomy as an example."
"What did you say?"
"Wasn't Galen's anatomy based on dissecting animals and imagining, 'The human body must be like this,' and then drawing it? How does it compare to actual dissection?"
"That's..."
"If we were to point out the errors, there aren't just one or two... If you look at the drawings by our Dr. Cheselden, first of all, the human thigh bone is straight, but the one Galen saw and drew is curved. I'm saying we shouldn't blindly follow old knowledge just because it's old."
"But... Greco-Roman times are the shining..."
"Is that what a Member of Parliament of the British Empire should be saying! Don't you lack patriotism! Don't tell me you wish to become a Greek or an Italian!"
"Ah, no! Of course not!"
The sight of an Anglo-Saxon MP frantically waving his hands in denial at a patriotism remark from a British person of Korean descent.
If a painter had seen this scene, he would have painted it immediately.
Regardless of the painting's quality, it probably would have sold for a very high price in Asia.
That's because it's a scene that no one but me could possibly create.
"Listen. The British Empire is writing a history unprecedented in human history. Do you agree?"
"Well... I suppose so."
"Think about it. Scurvy... When that damned disease was indiscriminately striking down sailors and the Royal Navy... Wasn't it only our British Empire, with its flexible thinking, that introduced lime juice to prevent the disease?"
"Th-that's correct."
It's better to save talk about Vitamin C for later.
They don't even know about the existence of vitamins yet.
So... they don't know why scurvy occurs, or why lime juice prevents it, but they use it empirically, that's what I mean.
Lime, the kind that kids eat...
So, in 21st-century terms, it has the image of a children's supplement like NoXgold or TenX, but the fact that they got tough sailors to drink this in the first place makes me think the British Empire didn't become great for nothing.
They were insane about experimental spirit, really.
So, in the early days, they probably made them drink sulfuric acid too.
Progress requires trial and error.
The problem with medicine is that each trial and error requires piling up human corpses...
"Let's try one more thing this time. Water is safer than alcohol. Let's introduce this concept, that's what I mean."
Now we can avoid that trial and error.
Why?
Because I'm here.
Because Dr. Kim Taepyeong, who holds hidden 21st-century modern medicine, is here!
"But... this will cause too great a backlash. Only the poor drink plain water. And... wasn't it you, Sir T.P. Young, who revealed that drinking Thames River water directly can kill you due to the miasma in it?"
It won't be easy.
So many things are broken that touching one part makes another shake...
It's like that even now.
I truly never dreamed, even in my wildest dreams, that my efforts to explain the concept of waterborne diseases in an easier-to-understand way would come back to bite me like this.
"Drinking it straight is bad. You can boil it and collect the steam to drink."
"Hoh... How can one do that every single time they drink water?"
"The guidelines stating that water must be boiled to prevent cholera... we distributed them, didn't we?"
"Haha. You did. But we drink wine or beer. If we must drink water, we mix it. Don't you know? That wine also disinfects."
"Ah."
They must think wine is chlorine (Cl).
If they think adding wine cleans the water...
But it was true that when cholera struck, it was mostly the poor who died.
Before, I thought it was just that poor people, being poor, didn't eat well and thus died easily...
But now it seems that's not the case either.
'Certainly, if they drank wine instead of water, they wouldn't have gotten cholera.'
As these experiences pile up, it seems the perception that alcohol is safer and superior to water would spread.
Can I fix this right now?
'It might be greed...'
When I first fell here, I thought if I preached like a prophet reciting the Ten Commandments, everything would work out.
But I realized long ago that doing that would get me treated not as a prophet, but as a witch, and killed.
No, even if some treat me as a prophet, changing people's perceptions and the behaviors based on them is very difficult.
Thinking about it, 21st-century Korea is the same.
The most correct way to be healthy is to not eat bad things and to exercise...
But the concept of 'health tonics' you eat to become healthy and IV drips... they just don't disappear, do they?
"Then, let's at least have them drink water after surgery. You saw it this time, didn't you?"
"There are rumors that circumcision itself is dangerous."
"No... it's not. I'll state definitively. Whether one drinks alcohol or water after surgery will make a tremendous difference."
"Is that so? Hmm..."
"If you're still uneasy, we could even conduct an experiment."
Gasp.
Was I a bit impatient?
I inadvertently brought up the topic of experiments.
Considering that 'experiment' in this era usually means human experimentation, not animal testing, it's a bit...
But...
The milk is already spilled.
Moreover, upon careful thought, it doesn