The Genius Doctor Who Lives Twice - Chapter 49

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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 49
Mudbrook District.
Every alley reeked with the stench of sewage that would back up in the rain and turn to mud, and the sprawling urban shadow of dilapidated houses crammed together where sunlight never reached.
In the center of the square teeming with crowds, a man in a long robe stood atop a crate, delivering an impassioned speech.
“Open your ears and listen well! This dreadful diphtheria is the stern whip the Lord has brought down upon this city, steeped in greed and corruption! When souls rot and fester in abundance, it is the innocent children whose breath fails first!”
His name was Oscar.
Among surgeons, he was despised as a “charlatan of the gutters” and a “witch doctor”—an unlicensed healer without credentials.
But to the poor of Mudbrook, who had watched their children wither and die for lack of a single coin, he was something altogether different.
For the past decade, Oscar had guarded these fetid alleys, lancing abscesses and holding hands, the sole savior and voice of his people.
“Yet these arrogant surgical butchers dare to speak of slashing a child’s throat and driving metal through to carve open an airway! Nonsense! That is no cure—it is foul blasphemy, blowing evil spirits through the wound opened by the blade!”
As Oscar raised both arms high, the parents gathered in a circle around him stomped their feet in unison and wailed.
In their hands lay piles of dried herbs and crude crosses that Oscar had distributed among them.
“Burn incense to drive away the poison of plague, and wash the child’s body in clean water! Do not sully their breath with metal, but strengthen their spirit so they might overcome the sickness themselves! Do not despair—take your child’s hand, meet their eyes. If your prayer is sincere, the Lord will open that breath to them once more!”
The cry of the slum-dwellers shook the square with terrible force.
“Oscar! Oscar!”
“Oscar!”
The surgeons branded Oscar a quack, but to the people of Mudbrook, it was the opposite.
Oscar was the true healer who carried the mercy of God, while those pompous doctors were nothing but bloodsucking frauds.
Men who reached for blue steel blades at the slightest ache, desperate to hack off limbs; who drew out cups of crimson blood and peddled mysterious toxic draughts on three-inch tongues—merchants of death.
Oscar, by contrast, did not resort to the knife.
He simply opened windows for air, brewed cooling herbal tea, and assured them of divine providence and the body’s capacity to heal itself.
Indeed, there were more than a few children in Mudbrook who had lain fevered in that way, then risen from their beds sound and whole.
For them, Oscar was no mere herb-seller, but an apostle and saint descended upon the city.
* * *
Edward’s Clinic.
The clinic door swung open with a bang, and Edward strode in drenched in cold sweat.
“Has something happened?”
Allen and William started in alarm.
Edward was gasping for breath.
He wore the face of a man who had witnessed something unspeakable.
“They were far more deranged than I expected!”
An hour earlier, Edward had set out for Mudbrook District with bold confidence, intending to persuade the people there.
Allen had felt some misgiving, yet Edward’s reputation had risen considerably of late, so he let him go without objection.
Indeed, there were not a few among the poor who owed Edward a debt of gratitude, and Allen had even harbored hopes that they might serve as bridges.
But he had miscalculated.
The resistance of Mudbrook’s people ran far deeper.
“They called me a butcher, asked if I feared God, demanded to know how I could dare to cut a child’s throat—every last one of them railed and condemned me, and here I stand without so much as a chance to open my mouth!”
Edward, unable to contain his indignation, began pacing with agitated steps.
Everywhere these days, people called him a master physician.
Moreover, with his dissemination of the tracheotomy and his pride in being “the surgeon who teaches surgeons,” today’s humiliation struck him with considerable force.
“Foolish fanatics, weren’t they?”
William lashed out with sharp words at once.
“The child’s throat is choking shut and they’re talking about burning incense and prayer? The imbeciles. I wonder if they’ll have the face to look their children in the eye in heaven. Then again, they’re bound for hell anyway, so what does it matter?”
Edward himself seemed startled by that cutting remark, his eyes narrowing slightly.
“…You are never to accompany me to a negotiation again.”
“Why persuade them at all? I’d rather steal in and slit their children’s throats open myself.”
William muttered with cold derision.
Allen sat with his chin propped on his hand, his expression far more complex, lost in thought for a long moment.
“Frankly, I understand their feelings to some degree.”
At that, William shot Allen a withering look.
“Sir. You ought to reserve your empathy for situations that warrant it.”
“No, listen. If this Oscar fellow were merely a purveyor of empty falsehoods, the slum-dwellers would not follow him so devotedly.”
“…Then what is he, if not a charlatan, a quack, and a fanatic?”
“I’ve heard accounts of the treatments he has administered. They differ little from our clinic’s practices. The distinction lies only in whether one understands the principle or has grasped it through experience alone.”
Indeed, Allen had been tracking the activities of this man Oscar and had been quite surprised by what he found.
Fumigating rooms with acrid smoke, isolating patients, providing boiled water to drink and bathing them to reduce fever.
In some respects, it was more progressive than the practices of physicians who freely administered bloodletting and enemas.
Even William, hearing this account, was forced to nod slowly.
“…It is a matter of blind luck turning into a hit, as they say, but I take your meaning.”
“Quite so. Yet in this matter, he is wrong. No matter how devotedly one tends a patient or how fervently one prays, a diphtheria sufferer’s airway does not open of its own accord.”
Treatment must never become blind.
Oscar had already fallen into the blindness of his own experience.
“In my view, conversing with that man is a waste of time. We ought to persuade people individually.”
Edward shook his head irritably at William’s words.
“I went out to persuade those individuals and came back in this state! We simply can’t communicate with them.”
……Tsk.
William clicked his tongue and exhaled heavily.
When Edward withdrew to the living room to clear his head for a moment, William turned toward Allen.
His complexion had noticeably darkened.
“Master, there’s actually a child in Mudbrook I know well.”
“You?”
“Yes. A boy named Tommy.”
“I thought you couldn’t stand children. How did you meet him?”
“I don’t think of him as a child. I regard him as a colleague.”
William began to unfold the story slowly.
When he first settled in the city, they had naturally formed a bond through the process of hunting strays, cats, and rats.
At first it was merely an employment arrangement—paying the boy to bring animals—but at some point they began venturing out to the outskirts together to collect specimens, and an odd camaraderie had emerged.
“There’s no child as quick and skilled at catching animals as that boy. I was genuinely astounded by him.”
“That’s just like you, I suppose.”
“If that weren’t the case, there’d be no reason I’d get along with children at all. But then……”
For several days now, the boy hadn’t appeared at their meeting place.
At first William had thought nothing of it, but with diphtheria spreading uncontrollably through the district, he couldn’t dismiss his suspicions.
Most decisively, he’d heard from the boy’s friend that “Tommy hasn’t come out of his room.”
William was certain Tommy had already contracted diphtheria.
“I’m sure of it. The boy is certainly bedridden. Whether it’s early stage or severe, I can’t say—but I must verify it directly. Just how bad his condition is.”
Allen regarded William quietly.
He seemed a man without empathy or compassion for others, and yet there was something peculiar about how he became fixated on patients in moments like these.
“I understand your sentiment well enough. Then we must go and assess his condition.”
“Yes. But if we go now, the moment they learn we’re surgeons, won’t they turn us away at the door?”
“Perhaps his parents won’t blindly trust Oscar either. It’s worth attempting.”
“In fact, I’ve already tried.”
William finished his confession.
A day ago, he’d happened to meet the boy’s mother at the well.
William had approached her hurriedly to ask after Tommy, but the woman had averted her eyes in fear and fled at once.
And around her neck hung a pouch of dried herbs and a crude solar cross that Oscar had distributed.
“I’m certain of it. She’s already fallen for that fiend’s manipulation.”
William bit his fingernails.
“I could kidnap him by force and perform the surgery……”
“William.”
Allen pressed firmly on his shoulder.
“That would violate our ethics as physicians, and if you undertook such recklessness, we’d turn all of Mudbrook against us.”
“But we must save the child regardless, mustn’t we, Master?”
William shot back immediately.
If all else failed, he was genuinely resolved to break in and open the boy’s throat himself.
Allen fell into thought for a moment, but the answer came to him with surprising speed.
“I’ll meet with someone. I suspect that person might be willing to bridge for us after all.”
* * *
At the edge of a quiet path on the Outskirts of Mudbrook stood Helen’s house.
Beneath the eaves hung mysterious bundles of dried herbs, and from the crack in the door wafted a sharp vinegar smell.
A damp yet peculiarly ordered space—the long-established dwelling of an old midwife.
“How presumptuous of an unrelated man to set foot in my home.”
Helen grumbled as she watched Allen step inside.
Allen chuckled and replied.
“A disciple calling on his teacher, that’s all.”
“I don’t train men as disciples. Teaching you craft is nothing but almsgiving to a stranger on the road.”
Allen was in the process of receiving instruction in midwifery technique from Helen.
Her knowledge, accumulated through long years of experience, nearly approached that of the Dreamland techniques.
Allen, who had known the principles only in his head and whose hands had been clumsy, was gradually opening his eyes to the sensations of fieldwork thanks to Helen’s teaching.
“But you’re not here to learn something today, I can see that much. Speak plainly. I can guess, but I’d prefer to hear it directly.”
Helen plunked herself down into an old chair and took out her pipe.
She lit a cigarette with practiced ease, as if propriety were beneath her concern, and exhaled a plume of smoke.
“As you’re well aware, we’ve begun performing Tracheotomy on children with severe Diphtheria.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Other districts are gradually accepting it, but Mudbrook remains impossible to convince. The distrust those people harbor toward surgeons runs too deep—we simply cannot break through on our own.”
Helen’s brow furrowed slightly at this.
“I can guess who’s responsible for that. Oscar, isn’t it?”
Allen nodded silently.
Helen drew on her pipe before continuing.
“To your eyes, he must seem like some fanatical charlatan leading the people astray?”
“No, that’s not it. His treatments actually work—that’s precisely why people believe in him so deeply.”
“You understand, then. These surgeons were so eager to amputate that leg, threatening to cut without hesitation, but Oscar refused to let a blade touch it. He treated it his own way, and the patient walked away whole. It’s happened more than once.”
Allen could not help but agree with Helen’s words.
The surgeons of this age wielded the knife far too carelessly, and they performed operations without even washing their hands or instruments—the outcomes were catastrophic.
Oscar’s conservative approach, which preserved the body and let it heal on its own, had saved far more lives than their reckless cutting ever could.
“But now his methods are causing genuine harm. Prayer alone will not open a blocked airway.”
Helen listened in silence.
“Would you consider becoming our bridge to them? Even as we speak, children are dying. To persuade the people of the slums to submit to surgery, we desperately need your help.”

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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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