A Hospital in Another World?

Chapter 156

For the past half month, aside from attending regular classes, Garrett Nordmark plunged into animal experiments. He and Matthew, each wearing a set of bird-beak protective suits. As for Bernard, he had to make do with a bubble spell and gauze mask, assisting with lifting and carrying tasks.

Barbarian’s constitution is +2? Or is it Toughness +2? Anyway, Garrett felt that the diseases he could catch would, at most, make Bernard sneeze a little...

In any case, the safety of the experimenters was temporarily assured. Garrett carefully designed the process and, with the help of Priest Matthew, began the animal experiment: placing each healthy animal in a separate cage, paying attention to the placement and airflow to prevent cross-contamination between cages (Priest Matthew kindly conjured vines and wove cages with grass and leaves, calling up the earth to form walls and separate the cages);

One-third of the experimental animals, each cage containing a bat, to observe if the experimental animals living with bats would be infected;

One-third of the experimental animals treated differently: adding bat urine, bat feces, bat saliva, or dust collected from bats to the feed and water, or using a cotton swab dipped in bat oral secretions to wipe the nostrils of the experimental animals;

The remaining one-third were kept in normal cages as a control group.

Feeding every day, observing the animals’ conditions, and writing daily records...

Garrett was truly grateful to Priest Matthew. He could build cages, raise earth walls, catch sheep, pigs, rabbits, and bats accurately, and never make a mistake in adding food and water, nor did he find cleaning the animal cages too dirty. Without his help, this animal experiment would truly be impossible to carry out in a day:

Garrett himself tried to catch a rabbit once, reaching into the cage to feel for about a minute but couldn’t catch it. The end result was the rabbit kicking his hand on the back. If he hadn’t pulled his hand back quickly, he suspected his fingers might have been broken.

Not to mention the lightning-fast white ferret, the mountain-goat-like sheep, and the hundred-kilogram black pig...

Garrett just glanced at them and abandoned the idea of doing it himself.

He stood beside and directed Priest Matthew, "Catch this rabbit! Turn it over! Measure its temperature! Stick the thermometer in! - Hey, don’t put it in its mouth. I only have one thermometer; don’t let it chew on it! Mercury is poisonous!"

"...Then where should I put it?"

Garrett stared at Priest Matthew’s eyes under the bird-beak mask, lips tightly closed, resolutely silent.

Priest Matthew wasn’t just doing all the hard work because of the teacher’s instructions. In fact, every time he did something, he had countless questions to ask:

"Why do we need so many different animals?"

"Because we don’t know which disease bats can transmit." Garrett looked at the cages with regretful eyes. So many? I still think we haven’t prepared enough!

Theoretically, mice, rabbits, dogs, pigeons, and the known intermediate hosts such as pigs, horses, and sheep, these must be prepared. If possible, it’s best to have civets and pangolins—oh, forget about the latter, they are protected animals...

"Why use different things to feed them with bats... um, different things?"

"Because we need to determine the transmission routes..." Fecal-oral transmission, droplet transmission, fluid transmission, different pathways require different defense methods. In terms of disease prevention, Garrett always shared his knowledge:

"For example, if it’s getting sick from inhaling its sneeze, you have to cover your mouth and nose like we do... If it’s dirty stuff getting into the mouth, wash your hands before meals..."

"Why prepare more than twenty of each kind?"

"Because animal experiments are a gamble on probabilities... Oh, it’s something about betting on possibilities. Looking at so many animals, dividing each route and each type of bat, there’s not much left."

Twenty is nothing? The guy from the pharmacy department next door gossiped, whenever testing a new drug, the first phase clinical trials would involve dozens to hundreds of animals, whether it’s mice, pigeons, or even monkeys...

Oh, monkeys are precious. After all other experimental animals die, select drugs that are relatively harmless and test them on monkeys.

Even in his previous life, when studying medicine, to let clinical medicine students experience a bit, doing a half-lethal dose experiment, it had to be divided into 8 groups in one class, each group with 6 to 8 mice. If you calculate it, you would need at least 48 mice to see some results.

Unlike here, each transmission route and each bat, the same type of animal, only gets two or three. This probability is making him nervous. Whether he can get results feels like something purely relying on luck.

Or rather, whether he can successfully issue a warning probably depends on the country’s luck at the Magic Council?

Garrett answered without hesitation, and Priest Matthew, piece by piece, memorized these seemingly mysterious knowledge. Even if he didn’t know what it could be used for, the fact that someone was generously sharing knowledge made it worth his effort to help with the work.

"Why do we need an equal number of males and females? We looked for boars and rams for a long time..." Especially boars. Many young boars were killed and eaten, and it wasn’t so easy to borrow a breeding boar, it was almost tear-inducing. In the end, they had to catch a group of wild boars in the woods...

"Because the probability of illness in male and female individuals may not be the same..."

Ah, poverty... Garrett looked around the animal pens, correcting himself, the animal laboratory, and shed a sympathetic tear for himself. According to the orthodox experimental design method, this number of experimental animals would need to be doubled at least, but...

He could barely afford it.

Even if he could afford it, there were not enough hands to take care of them. Even if there were enough hands, there weren’t so many people to measure the temperature of each animal one by one...

Ah, no wonder those who develop new drugs are big companies. When his status rises in the future, he must ask the Magic Council for a research group specifically to help him raise experimental animals...

Garrett added another reason to strive for an upgrade. Holding a notebook, Priest Matthew measured the animal’s temperature once, and he recorded it next to him:

"Wild rabbit No. 12, temperature 39... Hmm, 39.2 degrees, normal appetite, normal spirit, normal defecation, no abnormal secretions in the eyes, nose, or mouth, good health... Why do I have to measure if I already told you this rabbit is normal?"

"We still have to measure!—Besides, how can you guarantee it’s definitely normal?!"

"I can communicate with it! Servants of the God of Nature can do that—No, you can’t?!"

"Um..."

Garrett, who is seriously partial to science, didn’t know anything else about the skills of a Nature God’s priest... besides healing arts.

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