The Hosokawa Family migrated all the way from An County in Minoh Province to pioneer Haidong County in Owari over seventy years ago, spanning five generations. They’ve built five towns, established one Shrine Territory, and founded nine villages. Over ti, they’ve also managed several Oda Family villages, cultivated vast tracts of farmland, driven away countless wild beasts and bandits, and can truly be considered a powerful and influential clan in the Otai River basin of Haidong County.
So, even though he’s only the fourth son of the Hosokawa Family in Arako, and just barely coming of age—still wet behind the ears—when Maeda Toshie speaks, his words carry a lot of weight. He doesn’t even need to beat the crap out of the villagers to make a point; just by vouching for Nozawa and stating that any problems can be brought to him, the villagers instantly believe it—a hundred tis more effective than all the long-winded talk from Jiulang and Bald Jūbei put together.
Honestly, even Jiulang and Jūbei weren’t quite convinced Nozawa would really "charge such low fees"; they couldn’t tell if he was genuinely trying to do a good deed and felt pretty uneasy inside. So, when urging villagers to go seek treatnt, they never dared to make guarantees. Not hard to imagine how effective that was.
Now that they have Maeda Toshie’s endorsent, there’s no problem at all. The villagers began coming in twos and threes to see the doctor. They were still a little scared and acted pretty timid, but at least they weren’t worried Nozawa would suddenly whip out a sword and hack them up, or that their house would be raided after the treatnt.
Maeda Toshie was very satisfied with this, feeling he’d more or less returned Nozawa’s favor. He exchanged a few more polite words, set a ti for a formal visit later, and then left with A and Matsu.
Nozawa also got busy, treating villagers from morning till night, sweating buckets from all the work.
And buckets of sweat were absolutely necessary. Turned out there were way more patients than he expected, and many of them had chronic illnesses that had lingered for years—longer than he’d even been alive. Layer upon layer of ailnts, sickness compounding sickness. Even a seasoned old Chinese doctor might scratch his head, not to ntion a crash-course Mongolian quack like him who’d only skimd the Barefoot Doctor’s Manual twice.
At first, when he couldn’t figure out a case, he’d sneak inside to flip through his books. Eventually, he just started keeping the book at his side—if he couldn’t diagnose sothing, he’d openly look it up. By the end, he was treating patients straight out of the book. If this were modern tis, the patient’s family would’ve probably beaten him to death already, but in the Japan Middle Ages, all the villagers could do was gaze at him in awe as he furrowed his brow over those "Southern Barbarian books."
So of them blad themselves for being afflicted with such rare and weird diseases, feeling terribly sorry for inconveniencing the kind and benevolent Master Nozawa. Others figured they must be knocking on death’s door if even the highly skilled Nozawa needed to consult a book to figure them out—scaring themselves half to death in the process.
But nothing teaches like doing—it’s better to practice once than to read a thousand tis. Though Nozawa was treating illnesses in the foggiest way possible, Mongolian to the core, his dical skills shot up. In less than ten days, the "twenty-eight common pulse patterns" that had once left him totally baffled in the book were now mostly within his grasp, with the error rate dropping dramatically.
And things like the "eleven common southern parasitic diseases"—he saw them all within three days. Probably thanks to the era’s horrendous hygiene and cooking habits, almost every villager had parasites of so kind, even little Yayoi, who looked like a neat freak, turned out to have so in her belly, too.
Yeah, back when he’d only been reading about this stuff, Nozawa had no hands-on sense for any diseases and totally missed Yayoi’s intestinal parasites. On the clinic’s first day, he discovered soone who’d had chronic back and arm pain for years, with no visible injury or other symptoms. After wracking his brain and flipping through the book several tis that night, he realized it might actually be a case of roundworm infection.
Soon more and more parasite cases started popping up, and it hit him—that’s probably why Yayoi looked like a tiny refugee and was so weak. Odds were, she’d caught so kind of parasitic disease herself, not just from hunger alone.
Thankfully, parasitic illnesses weren’t exactly mysterious or hard to treat. He found a dozen ways to deal with them right there in the book.
As soon as Nozawa realized how widespread the problem was, he didn’t hesitate—he picked a recipe from the book and started making and distributing dicine. For roundworm pain, he used Dried Plum Pills; for expelling parasites, he used the Yellow Orpint and Cypress Bark Pills. They worked wonders for almost all common internal parasites.
The recipes were dead simple and dirt cheap. Dried plums, yellow orpint, cypress bark—these were all cheap and easy-to-find ingredients. The cost was next to nothing, and the effect was nearly imdiate. As long as people were willing to take the pills, ninety-nine percent would see their worries flushed away—literally.
Most villagers had no real education and were stuck in pretty deep ignorance. Though this anthelmintic treatnt was nothing special—modern dical students could rattle off dozens of flaws with it—here in the village, where people could feel the difference in a day, he was basically a Divine Doctor!
Even when Nozawa perford acupuncture so clumsily that he left several people with lopsided mouths and drool running down their chins, as far as the villagers were concerned, he was still their Divine Doctor!
Nozawa’s "Mongolian Doctor Survival Plan" was a smashing success!
In just under ten days, his reputation in Hibi Village and the surrounding villages jumped straight from "h" to "respect"—and he was fast approaching "worshipped." Things were looking great. If you put his progress on a stock chart, any Chinese investor who saw it would be moved to tears: Up! Finally up! And consecutive limit-ups, no less. All those eight years weren’t in vain; I always said we’d make money on stocks, but did you believe ? Who dares call a loser now!
Where the villagers used to treat him like he’d mastered the Turtle Divine Skill—dashing away at the re sight of him, or shrinking into their shells if they couldn’t escape, never daring to get close for fear of getting hacked—now, when Nozawa climbed the hills each morning, the villagers along the way seed to co alive. They’d approach on their own to greet him, and in daily life, they’d even help him gather herbs. Whenever they found so rare delicacy, wild veggie, or river fish out in the field, quite a few folks would sneak it into Yayoi’s yard for him—free of charge—to help him eat a little better.
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