Having organized the dicinal herbs and surgical tools, Yingbao donned a mask that her mother had made specifically for her, carefully cleaned her hands, and started making an incision on the patient’s sore.
Her senior apprentice brother also wore a mask, thoroughly cleaning his hands and assisting from the side.
The patient’s wife gave him a bath, cleanly washed his hair with scented soap, and dried it.
The patient then lay face down on a small bamboo bed. His hair was wrapped in a cloth to prevent it from getting in the way of the procedure.
Yingbao, with an expressionless face, poured so strong liquor onto his back, indicating to his wife and brother to hold his arms and legs down, and then she started cutting open the sore with a knife.
The patient was shivering in pain, biting hard on a cloth gag.
This was Yingbao’s first ti looking inside a sore, which resembled a bee’s nest. Nurous maggots were squirming in it, making her feel sick.
Resisting the urge to vomit, she used a pair of tweezers to extract the maggots one by one, placing them in a dish.
The dish was filled with water mixed with a toxic substance, more than enough to kill the maggots.
Upon seeing the young Divine Doctor extracting dozens of maggots, the patient’s brother couldn’t help but vomit.
Zhang Min scorned, “Even I haven’t vomited, yet you, his brother, are retching?”
The man did not say a word, just continued to dry heave.
The patient, who was in and out of consciousness due to the excruciating pain, was jarred awake again.
Once Yingbao had extracted all the maggots, only then did she use a knife and scissors to remove the rotten tissue.
This sore that resembled a bee’s nest also needed to be cut off and cleaned properly to prevent secondary infection.
As removing the sore was extrely painful, Yingbao feared the patient might not be able to endure the pain and die on the spot. She handed him a small bottle of Divine dicine, and emotionlessly said to his wife, “This costs five taels of silver, make a note of it.”
The woman didn’t care about the cost. She will do anything to make the Divine Doctor heal her husband, even if it costs her a hundred taels.
Zhang Min had goosebumps throughout as he watched Yingbao thodically removing the patient’s sores.
After two hours, Yingbao finally managed to open the sore on the patient’s back and remove the rotten flesh inside.
The wound left after the sore was removed was frightening—it was so deep one could see the bones of his spine.
Yingbao carefully applied the Divine dicine to the wound, then put on another layer of dicine, and finally wrapped it up with a clean bandage.
After settling the patient, Yingbao let out a sigh of relief. She instructed the woman to look after her husband carefully while she tidied up and left.
But she could not rest yet as she had to boil and disinfect the knife and other tools.
No one could assist with this task, so Chunniang only helped her daughter boil a large pot of water for cleaning and found a new set of clothes for Yingbao to change into. The clothes and mask that were taken off were also boiled clean in water.
After a series of bustling activities, Yingbao put away the tools that had been boiled for an hour, quickly ate sothing, and then went to sleep.
When she woke up the next day, she quickly went to check on the patient.
Fortunately, the patient’s fever had subsided, and he was already able to eat so food.
Only then did Yingbao relax. She cleaned up, changed the patient’s dicine, and presented the herbal dicine she had prepared for the woman to make into a decoction for the patient.
Three days passed in a flash. The patient’s back injury healed well, and the wound that was once as big as a fist was gradually closing. New tissue had grown, indicating that the sore had completely healed.
Both the patient’s wife and brother were overjoyed. They imdiately wanted to kowtow to Yingbao in thanks.
Yingbao helped them up and said, “The total cost is fifty-five taels of silver. Once you’ve paid, you can go back and rest.”
“Yes, I will go fetch the silver right away.”
The three of them had co on a donkey cart. The patient’s brother imdiately set off to fetch the money from their village. They were fortunate to co from a well-off family. For others, they could not afford such treatnt.
Zhou Wuchang watched as his junior apprentice successfully cured a patient with a severe ulcer and contemplated her achievent.
“Yingbao, how were you able to cure carbuncles?” Zhou Wuchang was curious.
Despite his student’s gifted dical skills and potential to be a divine doctor, he oddly chose to study forbidden curses with him, which was quite absurd.
He himself learned forbidden curses out of necessity, but this child went against the grain, seemingly out of sync with normal thinking.
Yingbao: “Because I can prepare divine dicine, all it takes is to cut open the ulcer, and apply my divine dicine, then naturally, it will heal.”
Zhou Wuchang’s forehead twitched as he asked: “I have a friend who also has carbuncles, could you cure him too?”
“I will only know once I have seen him.” Yingbao said.
“He’s in Beijing.”
“Beijing?” Yingbao imdiately shook her head: “I won’t go to Beijing.”
She did not want to revisit the place she had been once before.
Despite its prosperity, Beijing was dull without her parents and younger brother there.
Zhou Wuchang stroked his beard, “Then I’ll write a letter inviting him over.”
Yingbao nodded, “Okay, when he arrives, I will do my best to treat him.”
But before the master’s friend arrived, two more people ca seeking treatnt, both with ulcers.
One had an ulcer on his thigh and could no longer walk.
Yingbao and her second senior brother went into the fields to dig up a lot of dandelions, grinding them along with their roots for later use.
They also collected honeysuckle, wormwood, skullcap, and others. They had to purchase so of the herbs like Bupleurum, forsythia, coptis, and phellodendron from the pharmacy since they were out of stock.
After all the herbs were prepared and boiled into dicine with the water from Pupil Spring, Yingbao made these two people bathe and clean their heads before performing surgery on them.
Five days later, the two happily returned ho.
From then on, every few days, Yingbao received patients with carbuncles or toxic sores, which puzzled her.
Actually, she could cure many other diseases, so why did only people with sores seek her treatnt?
Through this, Yingbao noticed a pattern that most of those who had carbuncles on their backs didn’t pay much attention to cleanliness.
In the midsumr days, they would only bathe once every few days, and they never scrub their backs.
So, Yingbao wrote a thod to prevent back carbuncles and pustules on a large piece of paper, calling for everyone to regularly wash and scrub their backs, and in winter, they should maintain bathing at least once every seven or eight days and wash their heads with soapberry.
In the neighboring village, there was a man with leprosy, whose head was so dirty that he developed sores, and had lost almost all his hair, which looked terrible.
Since the village has beco affluent, the villagers should also learn how to prevent themselves and their family from falling sick.
Jiang Sanlang burst into laughter when he saw the notice written by his daughter: “It’s okay to bathe frequently in sumr, but I’m afraid it won’t be possible in winter, it’s cold, and many households do not bathe for the whole winter.”
“No wonder there are so many people suffering from carbuncles and pustules.” Yingbao muttered, then wrote and drew sothing on the paper, handing it to her father. “Dad, let’s build a bathhouse in the village. In winter, we heat up a pool of water every seven days, and charge people who co to use it.”
With the bathhouse, it would be convenient for their own family to bathe in winter, and they could also earn so money from the firewood.
Jiang Sanlang looked at the paper, on it appeared to be a large pot with several people squatting inside, and firewood under the pot was burning.
Although his daughter’s drawing was not good, it was simple and clear; even a three-year-old child could understand it.
Spring Maiden also leaned over to have a look, and wondered: “How big must the pot be to let people squat inside and bathe?”
Yingbao blinked her eyes: “Not too big, like the iron pot we use to cook pig food at ho, but we need to build a small pool on top of the iron pot, and connect it to a larger pool, then heat the iron pot, and the hot water inside it will get to the large pool. For the large pool, you need to provide an air duct from below, like how we provide heat for our kang bed stove at ho, so the water in the pool won’t get cold.”
Spring Maiden was confused, but Jiang Sanlang understood.
“Okay, I will arrange for people to build a bathhouse when I have ti. Hmm, one for n and one for won.” It’s the sa effort to heat one pool, so it’s also possible to heat two at once.
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