Reborn Ming Dynasty as Emperor

Chapter 473 Economic fluctuations caused by cholera

Not long after, Wu Youke came out with a group of doctors.

These people are all wearing black boots, white high-necked tight-fitting gowns, which are specially made by the Royal Weaving Bureau, and the silk threads are extremely thin and airtight. White-handed gloves are like soldiers fighting against the god of death, giving people a sense of awe.

Immediately afterwards, a white four-wheeled carriage drove over. As soon as the group of doctors entered the carriage, the carriage whistled continuously and left the First Royal Hospital at an extremely fast speed.

No matter whether the officials or the people heard the sound of the whistle, they knew that there was a critically ill person who needed to be rescued, so they all consciously moved out of the way.

At the same time, Zhang Yao, the Minister of Health of the Ministry of Health who was still staying at the Royal First Hospital, immediately ordered: "Immediately take out the high-powered microscope, open the isolation laboratory, and within ten meters, no one who is not a subordinate of the official is allowed to approach!"

As he said that, Zhang Yao hurriedly put on the same protective clothing as Wu Youke and ran to Zhu Youxiao: "Please return to the palace quickly, Your Majesty, after all, this is a place where evil spirits are concentrated. In His Majesty's body, even a humble minister will not escape the blame even if he dies a hundred times."

Zhu Youxiao also knew that he would hinder other people's work here, so he nodded and said: "Alright, Wang Chengen, pass the decree that the matter of the Royal Academy of Engineering will be put on hold, and go back to the palace and immediately summon the cabinet and the six ministers and the imperial censor to the west." Warm House discussion!"

Seeing that the Emperor Zhu Youxiao left, Zhang Yao immediately entered the isolation laboratory. The high-power microscope had been placed on the laboratory table, and the petri dishes and glass test tubes boiled in boiling water were also prepared, and lime had been sprinkled around them.

Not long after, a doctor galloped in under the escort of several soldiers with live ammunition: "The germs are delivered!"

Upon hearing this, all the medical staff of the Royal First Hospital rushed out like the enemy.

After the doctor sent a small porcelain bottle to Zhang Yao, he was sent to the observation room next to him for isolation and observation with the soldiers. He had to leave after three hours if he had no symptoms of fever or diarrhea.

After Zhang Yao took the small porcelain bottle, he immediately entered the laboratory, and then the one-foot-thick iron door was directly closed.

Only Zhang Yao smeared a patient's diarrhea on a glass slide, added Gram's stain solution one after another, dried it with an alcohol lamp, and then placed it under a high-power microscope for careful observation.

About two quarters of an hour later, Zhang Yao ordered: "Report immediately, it is not Yersinia pestis, but Vibrio cholerae, report to the imperial court, and enter the first-level epidemic prevention state!"

With that said, Zhang Yao took off the mask, put all the specimens into a glass jar, added lime, stirred quickly, and then threw them into the brazier.

Although he was already sweating profusely from the heat, he couldn't go out yet. He could only honestly enter another confined space, and commanded the outside through a microphone connected by a wire: "Send news to Shuntian Mansion that the pathogen has already passed away." It is confirmed that the infected person needs to be confined, and those who have contact with the infected person should also be isolated. If there is a death, it cannot be buried hastily, and it must be dealt with according to the epidemic prevention regulations of the Ministry of Health!"

A person outside answered and ran out immediately.

……

At this time, the cabinet ministers and ministers of the ministry were also summoned by Zhu Youxiao, and Zhu Youxiao did not beat around the bush, and said directly: "It is reported that the plague in Shanxi may have spread to the capital. The epidemic has never been tolerated." It is a small matter that thousands of people died, and tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people died because of this, so calling your dear ministers here is to make a temporary countermeasure against the outbreak of the epidemic."

As Zhu Youjiao said, Wang Chengen rushed in: "Your Majesty, I just got the news from the First Royal Hospital that the epidemic just discovered is not plague but cholera."

"Cholera!" Zhu Youxiao couldn't help standing up. He didn't expect that such a severe infectious disease would appear in Daming at this time, because according to Zhu Youxiao's understanding, the severe infectious disease such as cholera should only appear in the India and Bangladesh are the Indian Ocean area, but why did they suddenly appear in the suburbs of Beijing?
Zhu Youxiao originally thought that if the plague appeared in Daming, it would be nothing more than smallpox and plague. Among them, smallpox is a viral infection, the most aggressive, and the most difficult to eradicate. All the people of Ming Dynasty have been immunized, and once people are immunized successfully, they will not get this infectious disease again.

Of course, under normal circumstances, this kind of acquired immunity is not a permanent life-long immunity for the vaccinated person, and it will have a certain timeliness for many people.

Because of this, Zhu Youxiao also specially ordered the officials of various prefectures and counties to ensure that every newborn baby under their jurisdiction is successfully vaccinated and every unvaccinated person is successfully re-vaccinated, and a second vaccination is required regularly.

Because of this, smallpox did not cause ravages in Daming, and the smallpox virus, which should have spread more and more widely with the development of time, began to show signs of extinction.

As for the plague, this bacterial infectious disease is no less harmful than the smallpox virus, but fortunately, the biology of Daming has been greatly developed, especially with the improvement of glass manufacturing technology, microscopes After being manufactured, the microbiology of Ming Dynasty has been changed from scratch, and now hundreds of strains can be screened out, and they are mainly used in military and medical treatment.

For example, gas-producing bacteria that produce methane and hydrogen sulfide gas, Penicillium strains that can produce penicillin, and their derivative strains.

Although these strains in Daming have not undergone ultraviolet radiation or chemical methods to change their genotypes to cause genetic mutations to screen out new strains with stronger secondary metabolism capabilities, they can basically meet the needs of the entire Ming Dynasty.

That is to say, the current Ming Dynasty cannot directly create species using physical and chemical methods, but at least it can find useful species from nature.

Of course, maybe in the future, when Daming can fully utilize or produce electricity, he can use mercury vapor and high-frequency electric shocks to produce ultraviolet light. At that time, it may be possible to improve Penicillium or other strains and produce more types of antibiotics.

You must know that the secondary metabolite of the Penicillium strain, the Penicillium strain, only has a bacteriostatic effect but not a bactericidal effect. It is also thought that the pathogenic bacteria in the entire human body have not yet developed tolerance to this antibacterial effect. Only one unit of penicillin can allow an adult to survive a serious bacterial infection. If it takes time, with the emergence of new drug-resistant pathogenic bacteria, I am afraid that it will pose a greater challenge to Daming's medical biology.

If it was plague, Zhu Youxiao could link this source of infection with the plague epidemic in Changzhi, Shanxi, and expand the epidemic control area, but now it is cholera. With the introduction of pets or other animals, new pathogenic bacteria have appeared in Daming.

However, anyone in Daming is unfamiliar with this new pathogenic bacteria and has no immune memory cells. The unfamiliarity of the system with this new type of pathogenic bacteria will cause this Vibrio cholerae to spread in a large area.

This can be regarded as an inevitable disadvantage after opening the sea. It will not only bring wealth and foreign culture to Daming, but also bring biological invasion and ecosystem damage to Daming. Zhu Youxiao even regrets that he should let Customs established a quarantine bureau as early as possible. Of course, this kind of thing is sometimes unavoidable.

"It is my decree that foreigners who have recently come to Ming Dynasty are not allowed to leave their current location, and officials from all over the country are ordered to immediately control their freedom of life. Only those who have no obvious symptoms of diarrhea or fever are allowed to move freely, especially in the capital area, not only Only foreigners, including everyone, are not allowed to leave the city, and those who have no obvious symptoms will be allowed to leave after three days!"

As soon as Zhu Youxiao's decree was announced, he immediately ordered Yang Sichang, the admiral of the Beijing camp, to mobilize the Beijing camp to assist Shuntian Prefecture in handling the matter. At the same time, he ordered the Ministry of Industry to immediately go to the place where the epidemic occurred to set up a simple quarantine area.

A large number of Chinese herbal medicines with antibacterial effects hoarded in previous years were also allocated immediately, and the fermentation production workshop of the Royal Industrial Company was also required to increase the fermentation tanks for penicillin fermentation production.

Fortunately, due to the occurrence of the Shanxi plague, the Royal Industrial Company had already prepared a fermenter that could be put into production at any time, but even so, it was impossible to produce a large amount of penicillin in the early stage, after all, the strain in a new medium was It has to go through a period of adaptation and rapid growth. Only after the rapid growth period will there be a large number of mature strains for secondary metabolism. What's more, the fermentation technology of Daming does not have constant temperature automatic control and computer monitoring at any time, so the cultivation of production bacteria is difficult. is quite large.

But there is also one thing to be thankful for: Daming's fermentation technology has mastered the factors that affect secondary metabolism, such as the optimal carbon-to-nitrogen ratio summed up by later generations after several generations.

That is to say, in the early stage, the only way to curb the spread of cholera is to cut off the source and route of transmission. Of course, this is also the most effective way.

At this time, Daming did not need Wu Youke to discover the way to deal with the plague after the epidemic broke out in large numbers, so he could quickly use administrative means to cut off the source of infection and the way of transmission. ,

The way to cut off the source of infection is naturally isolation, separating the patient from the patient who has been released from the patient. This link can almost eliminate most of the pathogenic bacteria without spreading to other organisms.

Of course, sometimes it is inevitable that there will be fish that slip through the net, or some people with special genes are naturally immune to this new type of pathogen, or their autoimmunity is indeed too strong, so they are only carriers of the pathogen for a long time without symptoms. Performance.

The current Ming Dynasty is still unable to carry out antibody labeling tests on contacts of pathogens through biochemical indicators through medical tests, making it impossible to find out these carriers, so the only way to rely on the second link is to cut off the transmission route.

Although Vibrio cholerae is a new type of pathogenic bacteria, its nature and characteristics have been mastered by the Ming medical community, so it is easy to control its transmission route.

As Vibrio cholerae is a highly infectious bacterium in the digestive tract, the transmission route and medium are naturally not airborne, but human excrement, food and water. Therefore, the entire capital has also started a large-scale rational disinfection work. Fortunately, the urban management has been improved. With the improvement, human and animal excreta have already been managed in a unified way, and now it is not difficult to uniformly sprinkle lime for strict disinfection.

Food and water were also strictly managed. Zhu Youxiao personally issued an imperial edict ordering everyone in the capital not to eat any raw food or drink any raw water within half a month. All food and water must be boiled at high temperature.

Of course, because of this, people in the capital were panicked, because the delivery of the imperial decree made many people think that it was caused by unclean food, which caused a large number of restaurants and restaurants to drop sharply or even go bankrupt, and the prices of various foods also fell sharply, causing a large number of Food is unsalable.

As a result, the court's tax revenue has also dropped sharply, and the income of the Royal Bank has also declined.

But at the same time, the prices of various medicines began to skyrocket. In this era when antibiotics were only used in small quantities and in large quantities, and Chinese herbal medicines were used to treat diseases, the frequency of appearance of various magical medicines was even higher, not to mention that Ming Dynasty was also unprecedentedly developed at this time. With the media communication ability, when a famous imperial doctor said Huoxiang or Pinellia, Poria cocos, etc. have excellent effects on this type of cholera or have a strong preventive effect, a large number of people immediately went to buy such products in large quantities. herbs.

For a while, various "Chinese magic medicines" appeared in the newspapers, which also caused the prices of many common Chinese medicinal materials that were originally low-cost to skyrocket, and even directly surpassed the prices of rare medicinal materials such as ginseng, ganoderma lucidum, and Panax notoginseng.

Of course, there are many hoarders taking advantage of this opportunity. Many people take out a large amount of savings to buy medicinal materials. The simple-minded may be to buy medicinal materials to survive, and the long-term may want to take advantage of this opportunity to make a fortune. In short, the savings of the Royal Bank began Appears to be exhausted,

Before a large-scale ravage of Vibrio cholerae began, it had already shaken the economic foundation of the entire capital and even the entire Ming Dynasty.

"Appoint Sun Chuanting as the governor of Shanxi and supervising Shanxi's military affairs. Be sure to prevent the spread of plague in Changzhi, Shanxi. Order Zhang Yao to go to Shanxi immediately to assist Sun Chuanting. Tell Sun Chuanting to directly crack down on Shanxi merchants who intend to hoard medicinal materials. Be sure to eliminate the plague in this area." , so that it does not spread to the capital, making the capital even more panicked!"

With that said, Zhu Youxiao ordered again: "For the capital, Dongchang secretly investigates, who wants to use this to hoard medicinal materials, and at the same time orders the imperial pharmacy to sell the medicinal materials that have been collected over the years at the usual price. We must curb this unhealthy trend. , At the same time, as the Royal Industrial Company further lowers the price of newly produced drugs, its loss profit will be filled by the national treasury. economy!"

At this time, Zhu Youxiao desperately used his power as an emperor to administratively intervene in the fluctuations of the entire market caused by cholera, and tried his best to minimize the economic losses of Daming, in order to achieve the goal of overcoming this difficulty as soon as possible, and for the In the future, more capital will be left for the elimination of the Lin Dan Khan and the battle against the Raksha Kingdom.

　It is more difficult to write as you go to the back, but there are too many brainless trolls, which makes you feel extremely unhappy, so I stopped updating for two days. I am really sorry. Tipping, Mingxinkejian 200 starting coins reward, Niyang Drifting 1000 starting coins reward

　　
　
(End of this chapter)