Chapter 458 Black Death
Decedent was an adult male of moderate build and normal nutritional status.
The skin has extensive hemorrhage, ecchymosis, cyanosis, and necrosis, and the corpse appears purple-black.
Li Ang unloaded another stretcher from the shelf. The second deceased had flea bite marks on the inguinal lymph nodes, armpits, and neck.
Lymphadenopathy,. Surrounding tissue edema, hyperemia. And there is suppurative ulceration of lymph nodes.
The third deceased had pustules and black scabs on the body surface, surrounded by dark red infiltration, and the base was a hard ulcer, resembling skin anthrax.
Fourth deceased.
Fifth deceased.
Li Ang released his thoughts, inspecting and dissecting one corpse after another.
Jia Luo and Ouyang Shi beside him had increasingly solemn expressions.
Even Yan Yundang and the guards of Yan Mansion, who don't know much about medicine, can faintly see the problem.
The death of the deceased was really tragic.
Many corpses had lumps the size of apples and eggs on the inner thighs and underarms,
There are dense black spots on the arms and feet,
The skin festered in patches, as if it had collapsed and sunk directly.
It’s no wonder that the air-conditioning in the cold room has to be turned on so strongly. If the temperature wasn’t low enough, a layer of pus from the corpses would have accumulated on the ground.
"It doesn't look like it was put into the cold storage right after death, but it seems to have been placed in the deepest part of the battlefield corpses for several days."
A Yan Mansion guard couldn't help but whispered.
Li Ang glanced at him, didn't say anything, but asked Ouyang Shi to take out the microscope from the medicine box, and he and Qiu Feng took some blood, feces, pus, phlegm and cerebrospinal fluid of the deceased for smears through the power of thought. and perform Gram staining.
The so-called Gram stain is a means of identifying bacteria.
Unstained bacteria are difficult to observe under a microscope because of the small difference in refractive index with the surrounding environment. After staining, you can clearly see the shape, arrangement and connection structure characteristics of bacteria, and then you can classify and identify bacteria.
The steps of the staining method are as follows, first fix the smear,
Followed by dyeing with ammonium oxalate crystal violet for one minute,
(Ammonium oxalate is obtained by the action of ammonia water and oxalic acid. A small amount of ammonia gas is prepared by the reaction of ammonium salt and strong base, and then passed into water to obtain ammonia water. Oxalic acid is purified by carbon monoxide and reacted with sodium hydroxide to produce sodium formate, which is then detoxified at high temperature. Hydrogen to generate sodium oxalate. Then lead, acidify, crystallize, dehydrate and other steps to obtain oxalic acid)
Rinse with distilled water, add iodine solution to cover the painted surface and dye for one minute, absorb water with absorbent paper after washing, add alcohol to decolorize, and then use saffron, a natural dye re-extracted from saffron stigma, for a second counterstaining.
After Gram staining, Gram-negative bacteria will appear red, and Gram-positive bacteria will appear purple-blue.
This is mainly because the cell wall thickness of the two is different.
The vast majority of pyogenic cocci are Gram-positive bacteria that can produce exotoxins to poison the human body. Escherichia coli, Shigella, Typhoid bacillus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Bacillus pertussis, etc. are all Gram-negative bacteria.
The penicillin that Li Ang prepared before is a special drug against Gram-positive bacteria, but it is not effective against Gram-negative bacteria.
"Did you see it?"
Qiu Feng looked at Li Ang who was lying in front of the microscope, and couldn't help asking in a low voice.
She had never seen Li Ang so nervous, even panicked.
Even when facing Suzhou water poisoning or cancer, Li Ang has never been so disturbed. He even asked everyone to stand at the entrance of the cold room and not to approach him, leaving him alone to observe the microscope smear.
Li Ang's voice was undetectable,
Under the microscope, the pink bacilli are densely packed, like capsules, shocking.
Worst result.
Yersinia pestis.
Li Ang clenched his fists, changed the smear silently, and continued to observe the samples obtained from pus, sputum, spinal cord, and cerebrospinal fluid.
The result is still Yersinia pestis.
The plague, or the Black Death, is one of the most terrifying infectious diseases in human history.
During the era known as the Middle Ages, it claimed the lives of nearly 50 million people in Europe and as many as 200 million in the global region.
You must know that leprosy, which everyone has heard of, can only be classified as a Class C infectious disease.
Schistosomiasis, gonorrhea, pertussis, scarlet fever, meningitis,
Even malaria, tuberculosis, and anthrax can only be listed as Class B infectious diseases.
There are only two Class A infectious diseases that are on top of the peak of all infectious diseases.
Cholera, and plague.
If malaria is a demon that has coexisted with humans for countless years and parasitizes the human population,
Then the plague is the incarnation of natural disasters, an efficient sickle for death to harvest the world.
In the different world where Li Ang’s memories come from, the reason why the plague known as the Black Death suddenly dissipated after killing tens of millions of people,
It is not because it is extrajudicial,
But because there is nothing to kill, nothing to kill,
In addition, the host of the Black Death, the black rat, was occupied by the Asian Rattus norvegicus.
(The horned leaf flea on the Rattus norvegicus is not interested in humans, and with the disappearance of the black rat, the plague also temporarily retreated.)
"Rats die in the east, rats die in the west, people see dead rats like tigers; rats die within a few days, people's death is like tearing down a blockage. People die in the daytime, don't ask the number, the sun fades away and the clouds protect. The three of them walked for less than ten steps. Two people who died suddenly crossed the road. People who died at night did not dare to cry, and the plague ghost exhaled and the lamp turned green."
In a trance, Li Ang seemed to hear a mournful cry from afar.
He exhaled slowly, took out a fire talisman from the talisman plate, and burned all the glass smears.
He turned around, looked at Qiu Feng and the others who didn't know why, and said slowly: "The "Book of the Later Han Dynasty" records that there is a great epidemic in March in the fourth year of Jianning, a great epidemic in the spring of the second year of Xiping, and a great epidemic in the spring of the second year of Guanghe. The great epidemic, the great epidemic in the spring of the fifth year of Guanghe, the great epidemic in the spring of the second year of Zhongping."
Everyone’s expression changed in unison,
What Li Ang was talking about was the great plague that occurred in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. During the 21 years of Emperor Han Ling's reign, five major plagues broke out, directly breaking through the Han Dynasty's ability to withstand them, leading to frequent peasant uprisings, and finally adding the last straw to the demise of the Han Dynasty.
According to rough statistics, if we add in the suffocation that continued during the Cao Wei period,
The successive plagues (likely flu) killed more than half of the population, tens of millions of dead.
So much so that when it is mentioned now, Yan Yundang, Qiu Feng and others still feel the coldness that penetrates into the bone marrow.
"Is it really that bad?!"
Yan Yundang asked in a deep voice, he is an old soldier who has lived from the time of the Holy Queen to the present, and has seen many plagues in various places. It's hard to imagine, what could be more desperate than ten rooms and seven empties.
"Multiply the scariest plague you've ever seen by ten or a hundred times, and it's almost equivalent to the current plague."
Li Ang climbed up the frosty steps of the cold room step by step, and said slowly: "Get ready, the plague is coming."
(end of this chapter)