The Genius Doctor Who Lives Twice - Chapter 28

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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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Chapter 28
Saturday.
Allen was heading to the Orphanage when William followed him once again.
“Do you care for young children so much? You must be tired, yet you follow so persistently each time.”
Allen asked, unable to understand.
By nature, William seemed entirely incompatible with children, and in reality, he was.
William, thinking he no longer needed to keep up appearances, spoke with candid honesty.
“To be frank, I dislike them.”
“Then why do you come along each time?”
“Well, if I suddenly stopped coming after going with you, it would seem rather cowardly, wouldn’t it?”
Allen burst out laughing at such unexpected pride.
William shrugged and added to his thought.
“I wish I could come to like children as you do, sir.”
“Don’t misunderstand. I don’t particularly care for children either.”
“Is that so?”
“Children are innocent, but precisely because of that innocence, the malice that springs from their ignorance can sometimes seem crueler than an adult’s. Once you’ve been burned by it, it’s infuriating.”
He didn’t sound like he was joking.
William tilted his head in confusion.
“…I haven’t observed any child daring to play tricks on you, sir.”
“I suffered through it plenty when I was young.”
“When you were young?”
“I grew up in an orphanage under a church institution like this one.”
Allen recounted this matter-of-factly.
Though it must have been a terribly bitter past, his manner of explanation was so detached that William’s eyes widened.
“…But the fact that you became a physician in the Capital means you must have graduated from the Academy, doesn’t it?”
“That’s right. I was fortunate. A passing nobleman happened to take me in by chance.”
Allen said this and quickened his pace.
William, watching his retreating form, shook his head slowly.
This man was no hothouse flower.
Rather, he resembled a stubborn weed that had endured frost.
‘Perhaps the fact that he came from an orphanage allowed him to construct such revolutionary theoretical frameworks on his own.
He would not have been bound by ancient authority or prejudice.’
Ever since witnessing with his own eyes that the pancreas was the cause of diabetes, William had ceased to approach Allen’s knowledge with skepticism.
Yet the source of Allen’s knowledge remained shrouded in mystery.
‘Could such vast knowledge have been assembled merely from thought experiments within the author’s mind? He spoke as though he were an apostle receiving divine revelation.’
Remarks like “I was fortunate to open my eyes and see the elephant in its entirety,” or when pressed on how he’d seen it, his response: “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Most of all, just days ago he’d declared with absolute certainty, “I know far too well that I am right.”
It would be a lie to say William wasn’t curious, as a student of medicine.
But William was not the type to dwell long on metaphysical questions that couldn’t be touched by hand or confirmed by eye.
‘He said that even if he explained, I wouldn’t believe him. So that’s probably true. It would be better to spend that time learning one more practical lesson in medicine.’
Now he followed not out of curiosity about Allen’s background, but because he enjoyed simply observing and learning from him.
He was a man who had trusted only corpses, scalpels, and raw nature itself instead of crude textbooks as his answers.
And now, for the first time, he’d found a figure he wanted to bow his head before.
“…I never thought I would have a teacher other than nature.”
William murmured quietly and smiled.
Then he fell into step close behind Allen and made his way to the Orphanage.
Yet when they arrived, the atmosphere of the Orphanage was heavy and oppressive, unlike any ordinary day.
Silence hung thick in the corridors, and not a trace of children’s laughter could be found.
As always, the assistant priest Michael came out to greet them, but his complexion had already turned ashen.
“An epidemic has broken out.”
The priest said gravely and led the two men to a room at the end of the corridor.
The moment they opened the door and stepped inside, the stench of pus and rotting flesh struck their nostrils.
Three children lay side by side in the room.
It was horrific.
Their entire bodies were swollen and covered with pustules, their skin grotesquely distorted.
From burst pustules, yellowish pus and serum oozed out, drenching the bedding, and their bodies burned with fever.
With each breath they drew, agonized gasps filled the room, mixed with bloody phlegm they spat out in pain.
‘Smallpox.’
Unlike the Black Plague, which could sweep away an entire city or village in an instant, this disease lurked silently in the shadows and perpetually gripped society in terror.
Once contracted, it left behind grotesque pockmarks or blindness, and in nine cases out of ten, it stole life in excruciating agony—a demon’s curse made flesh.
“Did you burn all the blankets and pillowcases the child slept on?”
“Yes. And we thoroughly cleaned the infected room, then posted a quarantine order for some time.”
The priests at the Orphanage were often more knowledgeable about plague control than most quack doctors.
Given the nature of their facility, they knew that once an epidemic took hold, it spiraled into unstoppable catastrophe.
“It hurts… it hurts so much.”
The youngest child gasped, thrashing his hands through the air.
The high fever had him seeing things that weren’t there.
Between swollen eyelids, tears mingled with yellowish discharge and streamed down his face.
Allen closed his eyes, heavy with sorrow, then turned back to the priest.
“Among the children and staff here, are there any who have had smallpox before and survived?”
“Including the priests and servants, there are three in total.”
“Then see to it that only those three enter the quarantine room. Assign all nursing duties to them alone. And they must wash their hands thoroughly whenever entering or leaving.”
Allen withdrew a bar of soap from his medical bag and held it out.
It was expensive enough that the priest’s eyes widened in surprise.
“They must wash with this soap specifically. And place a basin full of distilled spirits at the room’s entrance. After washing, they must soak their hands in that basin for disinfection.”
“Understood, Doctor.”
“And I’ll need to examine all the other children.”
The absence of symptoms now offered no reassurance.
After the smallpox virus enters the body, there is an incubation period of roughly ten to fifteen days during which no symptoms appear.
Once that period passes, the prodromal stage manifests with sudden high fever, chills, headaches, and lower back pain. Only after another three or four days do red spots begin to appear on the skin.
These spots become papules, then progress through vesicles, finally forming the dreaded pustules that everyone imagines when they think of smallpox.
In other words, even the children who appeared perfectly healthy now could be in the incubation period.
Allen examined each child carefully, one by one.
He paid special attention to those who had shared quarters with the confirmed cases.
Whenever a child complained of even slight fever or headache, he immediately had them isolated in a separate room.
William worked alongside him, sleeves rolled up.
But since he had never trusted the Orphanage children to begin with, his rough interrogation reduced several of them to tears.
“You’re hiding something, aren’t you? Tell me the truth. That rash on your neck—it’s definitely a rash, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not! It’s just mosquito bites I scratched!”
“Don’t lie to me. You ate with those kids in that room yesterday, didn’t you? Tell me straight. If you hide this, everyone here will be wiped out.”
“Waaaah!”
Each time this happened, Allen sighed.
Yet as a result of their combined efforts, the examinations finished far more quickly.
After the full examination was complete, Allen washed his hands and spoke to the priest.
“No obvious new infections are apparent at the moment, but within days, other children may develop rashes. They must be moved to the quarantine room immediately.”
“I will keep that in mind.”
“And… would it be possible to meet with the Head Priest now?”
At Allen’s request, Michael tilted his head in puzzlement.
“Meeting him shouldn’t be difficult, but may I ask what this is about?”
“I wish to implement a smallpox prevention method for all the children in the Orphanage.”
“A prevention method? What sort of procedure, specifically?”
“There is a medical technique called Cowpox Vaccination.”
Allen did not expect the priest to grant this request easily.
But as a physician, his conscience compelled him to propose it.
If smallpox began to spread in earnest through an enclosed space like the Orphanage, the only end would be mountains of corpses.
True enough, Michael’s face went pale as he heard the brief explanation of cowpox vaccination.
“So… unlike variolation, which uses human pus, you’re saying you would inject pus from an animal—a cow—into the children’s bodies?”
“That is correct. It is far safer.”
“The Head Priest could never consent to such a procedure. He will declare it a violation of God’s providence.”
“Saving a patient’s life is both a physician’s duty and God’s will. Please, will you let me meet with him?”
Michael stood silent for a moment, his expression grave, then nodded as though he’d made a decision.
“Very well. Follow me.”
* * *
Dunford Church, the Head Priest’s chamber.
Allen sat facing Gabriel, the Head Priest.
It was the first time they had met like this in months, since the day he had first volunteered for medical work.
Gabriel’s expression was stiff and sharp-tongued, his prominent hooked nose adding to an appearance of formidable stubbornness.
“It has been quite a long time since we’ve met like this in person.”
“Indeed, sir.”
“I hear you have been serving the Orphanage children with dedication. May God’s blessing always be with you.”
Even as he offered his condescending remarks, the priest’s posture remained remarkably rigid.
He seemed like a man who had never learned to smile in his entire life.
‘Gabriel, the Chief Priest.’
Allen knew this man well.
Twenty years ago, when Allen was in the Orphanage, this man had served as both assistant priest and director of the facility.
Yet Gabriel did not recognize the grown Allen standing before him at all.
In a way, it was inevitable.
“Well then, what is this grave proposal that prompted such a request for an audience?”
He fingered his teacup, deliberately affecting gravity.
Before Allen had even opened his mouth, the outcome seemed painfully obvious.
Not prejudice—he knew Gabriel’s stubborn nature better than anyone.
“Smallpox has broken out in the Orphanage.”
“I’ve already received the report. Three children have fallen ill, I’m told. Such occurrences are common in facilities like ours. A calamity that visits us every few years without fail.”
“There is a way to prevent that calamity before it strikes, Father.”
The Chief Priest’s eyebrows twitched.
“Prevention, you say? That sounds rather like an accusation—as though we failed to take sufficient precautions and allowed the disease to take hold.”
“Nothing of the sort, Father. The Orphanage staff does everything in their power to care for the children. What I mean is that the disease can be stopped before it ever manifests.”
“You’re speaking of Variolation?”
The Chief Priest asked at once.
Clergy who had received formal training at theological academies typically possessed considerable knowledge of medicine at the level of general learning.
“Variolation is a reckless and dangerous procedure. You claim to protect children from smallpox, yet you inject pus into a healthy body and cause them to contract the disease anyway. As a man of God, I cannot abide such inhumane practices.”
“There exists a far safer modern medical technique. If we employ this method, the children will at least never face death from smallpox.”
Allen steadied his voice and began to explain the Cowpox Vaccination carefully and methodically.
But as his explanation progressed past the midpoint, Gabriel’s eyes began to twitch, and by the time Allen finished, the priest was pressing his fingers hard against his eyelids as though struggling to contain his anger.
“I cannot permit it.”
His refusal was absolute.
Indeed, the priest’s gaze upon Allen now gleamed with unmistakable contempt.

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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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