I want to be emperor

Chapter 1026 The birth, old age, illness and death of the royal family

Luo Zhixue was going to inspect overseas territories, which was a big event for the empire. After Luo Zhixue had this idea three years ago, some senior civil and military officials in the empire had already begun making various preparations.

Of course, this kind of preparation was actually carried out in secret. Not to mention ordinary people, even some officials at the second and third grade levels did not know about it.

What’s more, I didn’t know that in the past few years, the crown prince, the fourth prince, and the ninth prince have successively visited Southeast Asia and the Americas for inspections. In fact, they were all to prepare for Luo Zhixue’s overseas inspections or to practice.

Although the standards for princes and princes to go out for inspections are not as exaggerated as that of the emperor, the standards are not low. All necessary preparations are made, which can be used as a reference for Luo Zhixue's inspections to a certain extent.

The Empire has been secretly preparing for Luo Zhixue's overseas inspection for three years, from the upgrade and modification of the Princess Royal, the personnel training of the Guards Fleet, the mobilization of warships in the Navy Fleet, to the Army in the planned inspection area. The mobilization and deployment of garrison generals, the construction of the Asian-American trans-Bering Strait cable telegraph line, the preparation of planned supply ports for trans-Pacific voyages, various escorts of traveling fleets, and the advance construction, modification, and deployment of auxiliary ships wait.

These work started three years ago, but ordinary people and even many senior officials still don’t know why!

Because these many preparations often have other names, for example, in order to ensure Luo Zhixue’s medical safety at sea when he went out for inspections, the Dachu Empire Navy allocated funds three years ago to build various facilities that are said to be superior to A hospital ship for a large hospital on land!

Although the Da Chu Empire Navy has built hospital ships before, they were basically converted from ordinary passenger ships. They had small tonnage, few beds, and poor equipment. Their functions focused more on battlefield trauma and emergency treatment of non-combat injuries. It is positioned as a field hospital at sea.

But when it comes to Luo Zhixue's travel, this simple field hospital-like hospital ship is naturally not enough.

In order to ensure that Luo Zhixue's medical health problems may arise when he travels, the medical health of thousands of civil and military officials and more than 20,000 Guardsmen accompanying him, as well as possible battlefield casualties and other unexpected situations, must also be taken into consideration.

Therefore, the empire is preparing to transfer all the core medical staff from the Royal Imperial Hospital to accompany them!

And having people is not enough, there are also corresponding medical venues and equipment... After all, it is impossible for the empire to take away the wards, many medical equipment and even operating rooms in the Royal Hospital, isn't it?

For this reason, the Da Chu Empire Navy designed and built the Da Chu Empire three years ago in the name of a military hospital ship. It was also the first professional large-scale hospital ship 'Hua Tuo' in human history.

The Hua Tuo hospital ship has a displacement of more than 8,000 tons, has ten high-standard sterile operating rooms, and has more than 800 beds. There are many specialized medical equipment on board.

Many of them are medical devices that are still in the laboratory stage and have not yet appeared on the market.

Of course, even so, the medical equipment these days is actually very crude and primitive, and there are very few types... The most important medical equipment is probably the scalpel and other surgical tools... various knives, pliers and the like.

Medical equipment such as X-ray machines, CT machines, electrocardiogram machines, blood analysis instruments, and other common products in later generations have not yet appeared in the contemporary Da Chu Empire.

Among them, the one closest to application should be the X-ray machine...

The R&D team of the Royal Institute of Technology discovered X-rays in the 44th year of Chengshun, and then used the principles of X-rays to trial-produce the first X-ray machine in human history, which can see clearly without incisions. conditions inside the human body.

However, although the X-ray machine was invented three years ago, it is still far from being used in the market. Due to technical limitations, the imaging of the current X-ray machine is very blurry... What's more important is that , even if you want to obtain such a simple image, it will take forty minutes or even an hour of irradiation, which will lead to very serious sequelae, including skin burns, which are only minor...

This means that the so-called X-ray machine previously developed by the Royal Institute of Technology's physics department research team has no actual medical application value... The only application currently is to take bone images of corpses?

Currently, a group of physics professors at the Royal Institute of Technology are thinking about how to improve this X-ray machine to make it clearer and take less time without harming the patient. It is said that they are cooperating with the Department of Electronics. We conducted research together and applied a lot of results in the field of electromagnetics, and the progress was pretty good.

The lack of medical equipment also caused the medical level of the contemporary Chu Empire to be far from being comparable to that of later generations, or even to the level after World War I... After World War I, later generations at least had X-rays that could be used in practical applications. There is a X-ray machine, but the current Dachu Empire does not even have a practical X-ray machine.

Not only were the medical equipment poor, but the medicines were also not very good... Although the Chu Empire also produced many medicines, they were still far from being comparable to the many medicines of later generations.

This also leads to the fact that even if the Royal Medical College has the top doctors and the most advanced medical theories, equipment, and drugs, the actual treatment effect is probably not as good as that of an ordinary community hospital in future generations!

After all, the modern medical doctors trained through formal channels in community hospitals in later generations are based on the entire modern medical system. Compared with doctors a hundred years ago, they are as if they are standing directly on the shoulders of century-old giants!

For them, even a lot of it is the most basic medical common sense, but it was unknown territory for doctors a hundred years ago.

Moreover, even in community hospitals in future generations, people will be able to use various modern medical equipment and use these equipment for auxiliary diagnosis and treatment.

These are all things that the contemporary Chu Empire’s medical system does not have, so it is conceivable that the overall medical level is low... Modern medicine is originally based on modern science. If the underlying science and technology are not good, the medical level Not much better.

However, the medical research in the Dachu Empire was not without results. The results in drug research were good, at least much better than medical equipment that required harsh underlying science and technology.

Many drugs have been developed in the early years, such as aspirin, an analgesic and antipyretic drug that can be regarded as a major milestone. After more than 20 years of continuous research, scientists finally found a way to artificially synthesize this drug. and began large-scale mass production.

After years of ramping up production capacity, Jinling Pharmaceutical Company has established a huge production capacity, making this drug affordable and available for use in major medical institutions.

In addition, the research on antibacterial drugs, which Luo Zhixue ordered and focused on in the early years, has also made significant progress in recent years. Researchers from the Department of Medicine at the Royal Institute of Technology have come up with a lot of research from the Department of Chemistry. While conducting experiments and research on various messy compounds, I finally found a chemical compound that can effectively kill germs. Because this compound is an ammoniated product of sulfonic acid, it is also called sulfonamide.

Whether it is aspirin or sulfa, their research and development process is very long... Aspirin began with repeated research when scientists discovered that willow bark can relieve pain and reduce fever, and finally discovered salicylic acid, and then searched for various ways to understand its pharmacological effects. Finally, I found acetylsalicylic acid, and then started a long journey of searching for artificial synthesis. It took more than 20 years to finally come up with such a thing!

As for sulfa, it cannot be said that it took more than 20 years to research this thing. To be precise, it took the imperial medical community more than 20 years to find such a usable antibacterial after Luo Zhixue’s instructions. drug.

In fact, it only took more than a year to discover the antibacterial effect of sulfonamide and then to produce and apply it to medical treatment. This thing was actually one of a lot of useless compounds synthesized by the Department of Chemistry before. , the history of its synthetic invention can be traced back to the 31st year of Chengshun... But no one knew that this thing could be used as medicine.

It still takes researchers from the Department of Medicine to test countless compounds and finally find out that this thing is useful.

Behind the discovery of this thing, researchers have been experimenting day and night for more than 20 years, and invested countless research funds!

It’s not like Luo Zhixue pointed to a red dye and said that this thing can cure diseases, and then the researchers tried it, wow, it turns out that it can really cure diseases...

The so-called red dye in the original time and space actually had to be artificially synthesized aniline violet in 1856, and this thing was not sulfonamide. Later scientists conducted further research based on this stuff, and then synthesized sulfonamide in 1908, and in 1932 The antibacterial effect of sulfonamides was discovered only in !

Although the whole process was full of accidents, it was actually the result of decades of various research experiments by scientists, which finally led to the creation of various messy chemical compounds, and then the so-called 'accidental discovery that sulfonamides have antibacterial effects' .

Without the aniline purple in front, there would be no sulfonamide, and without sulfonamide, there would be no so-called antibacterial effect discovered by accident.

Behind this, it represents the results of nearly a hundred years of scientific research in human history, which cannot be evaluated by chance.

In the development of these two typical drugs, aspirin and sulfa, Luo Zhixue certainly played a guiding role in the process... But Luo Zhixue's biggest role was not actually guidance, but continued to provide a stable research environment and never been in short supply. funding. As for the so-called guidance, it was at most just giving some basic chemistry and medical knowledge. Then even if Luo Zhixue directly said that this thing was sulfonamide, it actually had no meaning.

Because the word sulfonamide was originally a word used by later generations of scientists, and it only took on the meaning that people recognized after the emergence of sulfonamide.

Before the advent of sulfa, these two words had virtually no meaning.

You Luo Zhixue said to a group of scientists that sulfonamide is an antibacterial drug, and they would ask you what sulfonamide is... No, in the early days, they had to ask you what this amine is? Is it smelly meat that has been stored for a long time?

Well, before the modern chemical system used this word in the field of chemistry, the meaning of this word was: smelly meat that has deteriorated after being left out for a long time.

You used the word sulfonamide to tell a group of scientists that this thing has antibacterial effects!

The scientists' first reaction was: Is this sulfonamide a compound produced by soaking smelly meat that has been left for several months in sulfuric acid? It's miles away from the truth.

Many Chinese characters in the field of chemistry used by later generations are either newly coined characters after the introduction of modern chemistry in the 19th century, such as ammonia and ammonium; or they are described by borrowing Chinese characters with certain similar meanings in terms of characteristics, such as amine.

So...if you are lucky enough to travel to ancient times, don't talk to the ancients about some words from later generations, especially words in the field of physics and chemistry...because there is a high probability that this word did not exist in ancient times, or there was this word, but the meaning was completely different.

Although the Great Chu Empire is still far away from future generations in terms of medical theories, equipment and drugs, it will still do its best to provide the best medical treatment for Luo Zhixue and the members of the royal family.

Although this is of little use...

This can be seen from the fact that there are still many premature deaths among the members of the royal family. In the past forty years, Luo Zhixue has actually included a large number of people in the harem. In addition to the early years when he was busy fighting for hegemony and had fewer children, in the empire After stabilization, Luo Zhixue's frequency of favoring concubines in the harem was still relatively high.

This has also led to the fact that there are actually a lot of pregnant concubines... However, if you are pregnant, you may not be able to give birth smoothly. There are still some cases of miscarriage or even dystocia due to various reasons. In addition, you will definitely be able to grow into adulthood smoothly after giving birth.

Even as an adult, you may not live long.

Over the past forty years, Luo Zhixue has given birth to nineteen princes who have successfully passed the full moon... But now there are only sixteen surviving princes, and several daughters have dystocia or died in infancy.

At first, Luo Zhixue was still very sad when his concubines had miscarriages, dystocias, and children died, and would even get angry at others because of his sadness... But now that he has seen these things more often, he has gradually accepted them as he grows older.

The medical technology these days is so poor. Even if the prince and grandson have the best medical conditions, there is no guarantee that they will survive to adulthood.

Even if you live to adulthood, it will not be smooth sailing.

For example, the eldest son of the emperor, whom he loved most, had been in poor health since childhood and had been taking medicine all year round. Since then, he has been bedridden all year round.

At that time, he had a skinny face, and he looked older than Luo Zhixue, who was only in his thirties.

After being bedridden for three years, the emperor's eldest son Luo Xuan died of illness in the 42nd year of Chengshun at the age of thirty-eight.

According to what the medical team at Taiyuan Hospital said privately, it was a miracle that the eldest son of the emperor could survive to this day, but the miracle should have come to an end now... Luo Zhixue had no other choice but to sigh.

Things like birth, old age, illness and death, even though he is the emperor, he cannot control... All he can do is try his best to hang on his life for a few years, and then give him a posthumous honor that is beyond the standards and does not even conform to the foundation of the empire's rule. That is The eldest son of the emperor who died of illness was given the title of crown prince.

Before the emperor's eldest son, Luo Kai, died of illness, he was granted the title of Prince of Jin. He was the highest-ranking ancient prince in the Chu Empire... Not every prince could enjoy this kind of prince.

After his death, Luo Zhixue posthumously named him Prince Airen... To be honest, this was not very suitable, at least it did not comply with the corresponding clan regulations of the empire. However, this rule itself was set by Luo Zhixue, and he had to give it to his beloved The eldest son made an exception and was granted the title of crown prince. The ministers could not object even if they wanted to.

Even the prince had to pinch his nose and say that the prince's title was good and wonderful, and it staged a drama of brotherly love and respect for his elder brother... Although the prince Luo Jian had been looking forward to the death of the eldest son Luo Xie for many years. .

After all, many high-ranking officials in the early empire knew that Luo Zhixue's favorite son was the eldest son of the emperor. He once wanted to make the eldest son the prince. On the one hand, it was for the sake of the stable succession of the throne to avoid future turmoil. On the other hand, the health of the eldest son was also It's so bad that it looks like a premature death...

Finally, the system of direct eldest son was confirmed, and the emperor's second son, Luo Jian, the eldest son of Empress Wang, was made the crown prince.

Although this matter is a secret at the highest level of the empire, there are still people who should know...such as Crown Prince Luo Li.

When they were young, the two brothers seemed to have a good relationship on the surface, but in fact they were not on good terms... Because to a certain extent, Luo Xuan was the prince who threatened the crown prince Luo Jian the most... without even mentioning other things. For many reasons, as long as Luo Xuan is still alive, he is the biggest threat!

After Luo Kai died, there was basically no second prince in the Luo royal family of the Chu Empire who could pose an obvious threat to him.

Luo Kai's death from illness was a bit of a blow to Luo Zhixue, but in terms of how big it was, it was not really a big blow... After all, this child looked like he might die at any time when he was a child. Luo Zhixue was often worried about it when he was a child. He died of illness.

Later, he lived to be thirty-eight years old. To be honest, Luo Zhixue was able to see past it...

However, there is still an impact, that is, with the death of the emperor's eldest son, Luo Zhixue felt that he might not live for many years, so he finally made up his mind to conduct overseas inspections.

After three years of preparations, all secret preparations for Luo Zhixue's overseas inspection have been initially completed and have officially entered the public preparation stage.

In late April of the 47th year of Chengshun, the Da Chu Dynasty Newspaper published the news that Luo Zhixue would conduct inspections of overseas territories in the near future. Naturally, there was a lot of discussion in the world, especially among people in overseas territories such as Nanyang and America. Officials, businessmen, or ordinary people, even an ordinary farmer in America.

They were all shocked by the news, then filled with joy and anticipation.

This is your Majesty's personal inspection!

The political significance contained here is so great that even ordinary people can feel it!

(End of this chapter)