The Genius Doctor Who Lives Twice - Chapter 26

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 26
Green Hills district. Robinson Clinic.
Surgeon Robinson’s mood had soured considerably of late.
News that Edward Clinic had taken on another apprentice was already spreading like wildfire.
He’d thought it a mere flash in the pan, but now it was becoming a genuine threat to his practice.
‘There are already patients in Green Hills going to him for treatment.’
The wealthy clientele of Green Hills had once been Robinson’s virtual monopoly.
He’d lived comfortably, attending only to the affluent and turning away common folk—until suddenly a rival appeared on his doorstep.
What galled him most was that his competitor wasn’t even an elite trained in Carden, but merely Edward, some former military surgeon.
“It’s rather quiet today, Master.”
His oblivious apprentice scraped away at his nerves with such remarks.
Robinson’s fists clenched.
“Bored because there’s no work, are you?”
“No, that’s not it at all, Master.”
“Go wipe down the chairs, you worthless wretch.”
Robinson sent the apprentice away with a gesture, then sank back into his chair with a sigh.
The ledger before him—its figures halved—swam in and out of focus.
“Dear. Dinner is ready.”
His wife’s voice drifted from the corridor.
Robinson answered testily.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Pardon?”
Sharp, purposeful footsteps drew near.
Instinctively, Robinson straightened his spine.
Mrs. Robinson appeared in the doorway, drying her hands on her apron.
She fixed her husband with an imperious glare.
“Not hungry?”
“…Yes. I am.”
Robinson rose with a groan and shuffled reluctantly toward the dining room.
The table was laid out handsomely enough, but Robinson picked at his food without conviction.
“Dear.”
His wife addressed him.
Robinson inclined his head.
“What is it?”
“I need a new dress for Mrs. Parker’s soirée.”
“…You already have more dresses than you could possibly wear.”
“They’re all out of fashion. You have no idea how keenly the people of Green Hills follow the trends. They say Carden has been sporting entirely new fashions for years now.”
A retort rose to Robinson’s throat—’Is this Carden?’—but he lacked the courage to voice it before his wife.
“You can buy me one, can’t you?”
“…Let me look over this week’s accounts first.”
“It does seem like we’ve had fewer patients lately. I’m not imagining it, am I?”
“…Illness doesn’t always arrive on schedule, after all.”
Robinson shuffled through transparent excuses.
When he returned to his consulting room after that thorny meal, no wealthy patient awaited him—only a shabby-looking man seated in a chair.
Robinson recognized the face at once.
The apprentice scratched his head, visibly flustered at the sight of him.
“I told him you were dining, but he insisted on waiting and forced his way in anyway, sir.”
“Show him in and lock the door.”
Robinson gave the apprentice a curt command.
The moment they sat facing each other, he pressed directly to the matter at hand.
“Well? What did you find?”
The man answered with a grin.
Yellowed teeth, several missing, flashed bare.
He was a former sergeant—a man who collected debts and made his living extracting others’ secrets for coin.
This time Robinson had paid him handsomely to dig into Allen Light’s past.
“Most intriguing fellow, this Allen Light.”
“Well? What did you turn up? Speak!”
“Nothing at all, sir.”
Robinson’s face twisted in an instant.

“…Did I mishear you?”
“Word for word, it’s clean. I’ve searched the neighboring cities thoroughly, and there’s no physician by that name anywhere. There’s no record of registration with the Surgeons’ Guild either.”
“And you find that interesting?”
Robinson’s fury erupted.
“Give me my money back. You incompetent wretch.”
“Now, wait just a moment.”
The man waved his hands urgently.
“That’s precisely what I find interesting, you see. The very fact that someone of such considerable skill should have a past so thoroughly shrouded in mystery.”
“That’s what I paid you to uncover, you charlatan fool.”
“Right, what I’m saying is, he’s no ordinary man. He’s a major player, a major player indeed.”
Robinson’s eyes narrowed.
“Go on then. Make your case.”
“The man appears quite versed in folk remedies. His treatments are unconventional, but when you examine them closely, most prove surprisingly simple.”
“That much I already knew. Next.”
“It’s highly probable he’s a former healer rather than a formally trained surgeon—the sort who wanders from town to town peddling remedies.”
“That too, I had already anticipated.”
Robinson began to grow visibly impatient.
“So you took my money and sat in your easy chair imagining things? Give me back my——”
“But I’ve been following them! For an entire month!”
“Did you find anything unusual? Illegal procedures, suspicious behavior, contact with questionable individuals?”
“There was one rather peculiar thing they did.”
“What was it?”
“It was about a few weeks ago. They went out to the countryside as a group and spent considerable time conversing with a rural farmer. Then suddenly, from a cow’s udder——”
The man launched into his account in earnest.
Robinson’s expression, which had been listening quietly, grew increasingly bewildered and complex.
* * *
Edward Clinic.
Allen, Edward, and William sat together in the parlor.
All three had rolled up their shirtsleeves to expose their bare forearms.
“…Good heavens. Pustules are actually forming.”
Edward gazed down at the small pustules erupting along his forearm, exhaling softly in wonder.
William, meanwhile, was examining his own arm with an expression of pure fascination.
“Once we extract the pus from here, in theory, vaccination becomes possible in others as well.”
Allen added the explanation matter-of-factly.
Ten days prior, they had ventured to the countryside and extracted pus from the udders of cattle infected with cowpox.
Then they had made small incisions on their own arms and inoculated themselves directly.
This was the result.
At first, small papules had emerged, which transformed into vesicles, and then into pustules filled with discharge.
“But tell me, Allen. Truly… if we’ve contracted this, we won’t catch smallpox?”
Edward asked cautiously.
Allen had insisted so forcefully that immunity to smallpox developed after contracting and recovering from cowpox that they’d consented to vaccination almost without thinking, yet doubt still gnawed at him.
“No. You won’t.”
“Smallpox and cowpox are… fundamentally similar diseases? When the body faces a similar enemy, it remembers and responds?”
“Precisely.”
“Hmm……”
Even Edward, who would ordinarily trust Allen’s words without question, found his face clouded with skepticism this time.
It simply defied common sense.
It was William, standing nearby, who suddenly brightened and interjected.
“If you doubt so greatly, could we not obtain pus from an actual smallpox patient and inoculate ourselves to test the theory?”
“What?”
“If your words are true, we’d come through smallpox inoculation without harm.”
“Don’t even jest about such a horrifying thing! The very thought makes my legs go weak!”
Edward flailed his hands in horror.
William chuckled at his reaction.
“Edward. This cowpox vaccination will be the future. It’s overwhelmingly safer than variolation, with identical effectiveness.”
At Allen’s assertion, Edward’s eyebrows twitched slightly.
Variolation had traditionally been a lucrative procedure for surgeons.
It required considerable effort—from procuring suitable smallpox pustules to the attenuation process through post-inoculation management.
Above all, it was dangerous.
Mortality rates could reach as high as ten percent post-inoculation, and because one was exposing patients directly to living pathogens, both the patient and the physician performing the procedure risked their lives.
“But there’s a fundamental problem with this Cowpox Vaccination, Allen. Conservative people will never accept having cow pus injected into their bodies.”
Allen nodded at Edward’s observation.
Public resistance was something he’d anticipated to some degree.
But it wasn’t as though there were no solutions.
“We don’t need to extract the pus from a cow every single time. As we see with the pustules on our arms, once vaccinated, we can harvest the pus from a human arm and transfer it to the next person, continuing the chain that way. That should substantially dilute the hostility toward directly receiving cow pus.”
“…Fundamentally, the very fact that it originates from a ‘cow’s disease’ matters. Frankly, even as a physician myself, I find it distasteful—what about the ignorant common folk?”
Edward glanced toward William as if seeking his agreement.
But William only tilted his head in puzzlement.
“The results are certain and there’s no risk of losing your life—rejecting this simply because it comes from a cow sounds like lunacy, doesn’t it?”
“…I’m the fool for seeking normal opinions from an eccentric like you. Let’s forget I asked.”
Edward sighed and rolled down the shirt sleeves he’d pushed up.
Then he fixed his gaze on Allen again.
“So in the end, you’re pushing to make this ‘Cowpox Vaccination’ the centerpiece of our clinic’s business. Setting the price far below Variolation, no less.”
“Honestly, I wouldn’t mind doing it for free.”
“That won’t do! We must receive fair compensation. Still, since vaccination could be far cheaper than Variolation, there might be quite a few people seeking it out…”
Because Variolation was so expensive, in the terror of Smallpox, only wealthy Middle Class families and above could barely afford the procedure.
Because Cowpox Vaccination would be inexpensive, it was possible to reach countless common families who had been left defenseless against the Smallpox threat due to cost.
Edward’s mind began producing the mental image of an abacus clicking away.
* * *
But reality proved far less cooperative.
As Edward Clinic gained renown, patients began trickling in requesting Variolation.
Each time he welcomed them, Edward broached the subject cautiously.
“Have you perhaps heard of Cowpox Vaccination?”
He then made a genuine effort at persuasion.
Much safer than Variolation, costs less money, everyone in our clinic has undergone the procedure, so trust us and so on.
But those who heard him out wore expressions of profound reluctance.
“What? You’re saying you inject cow pus into humans?”
At that point, they were being relatively polite.
Some grew angry and bolted from their chairs.
“Are you making a fool of me right now?”
The reactions were overwhelmingly hostile.
Since it was usually not themselves but their children receiving the procedure, parental resistance ran deeper still.
But did it fare better among the Slums residents? It did not.
Slums dwellers were largely gripped by superstitious beliefs, and the moment they heard “cow pus,” they erupted into panic.
“Don’t you dare speak such inauspicious words!”
They would immediately cross themselves and flee in haste.
By this point, even Allen had to admit it.
That Cowpox Vaccination could not be forced upon this age.
Yet surrendering was not an option either.
‘If Cowpox Vaccination could be properly disseminated, I could completely eradicate Smallpox as a scourge from this era.’
In Dream Land, Smallpox was already an extinct disease.
Humanity had used its wisdom to purge a single disease from the face of the earth forever.
What a magnificent triumph.
He would have liked nothing more than to borrow the government’s administrative machinery and spread Cowpox Vaccination throughout Danford, but no matter how close his ties with the Senior Clerk, it was unthinkable he would grant such an extraordinary request.
Above all, when most people found even the existing Variolation distasteful, mass implementation of Cowpox Vaccination was simply not feasible.
Two weeks after beginning his Cowpox Vaccination promotion.
Edward slumped into his chair, utterly drained after consultations.
His usual vigor had vanished—his entire body sagged with exhaustion.
“Not a single person has come forward willing to receive Cowpox Vaccination.”
He confessed to Allen in a voice barely above a whisper.
“Just do Variolation like everywhere else. Keep stubbornly insisting on this and you’ll lose all the patients you’ve worked so hard to gather.”
Allen too ruffled his hair in frustration.
William, who had been quietly pacing nearby, ventured a question.
“What if we simply claimed it was Variolation on the surface, but actually inoculated Cowpox Pustule instead?”
At those words, Edward turned his head slowly.
His eyes suddenly gleamed with life.
“Oh, that’s really a good idea—”
“We can’t do that.”
Allen cut him off sharply.
Both men’s gazes turned toward Allen simultaneously.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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