Greyscale II

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Warning: this chapter touches on medical topics, I do not handle very advanced concepts regarding this, but I have knowledge of how cruel the research methods were at that time.

This chapter will touch on concepts such as: dehumanization and torture.

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Ernst doctor POV

Upon submitting my findings with my report I was again given another set of tests to perform, this time I was given 2 books

Greyscale by the septon Lyman

A septon?, what the hell would a priest know about medicine?

( Greyscale is a punishment of the seven against people who have deviated from the correct worship of the seven, to be cured of this disease they must pray to the ....)

I did not finish reading it and threw it into the fire where this garbage belonged, apparently someone just read the title and thought there would be something interesting to look for a cure.

Let's see what this one says

Rare diseases by Archmaester Pylos

(Greyscale is a disease that originates from the continent of essos, it is said to be a magical disease created by a curse on the valyrians for their crimes in a war, possibly it is a disease that was in a certain area and as the dragon lords connected essos with their roads the disease must have begun to spread, Greyscale produces a calcification of the skin making it hard as stone and leaving without sensation to its carrier, it is extremely contagious only a minimum contact with an infected person is enough to become infected, it is not recommended the amputation of the members when the calcification of the fingers is already present because it is too late, The treatment for this disease is debatable, but with my personal experience in the treatment of this disease I strongly recommend, to remove the hardened skin by cutting pieces and extracting them with tweezers leaving them in a container to be burned after the procedure, after having all the infected area removed should be covered with plasters to help to heal, with this procedure the disease should stop spreading leaving a hardened but healthy skin, the skin may try to return to normal, but will require re-treatment, it is my personal knowledge that someone who gets this disease and heals becomes completely immune to get sick again).

Very interesting this Archmaester Pylos has an excellent book unlike his peers he seems to be really treating this disease.

I feel that this treatment is the right one

I prepare my tools and get ready the ointments that I will have to use, this procedure will be incredibly painful, as I will have to remove the skin.

With the test subject firmly strapped down, I began injecting morphine to alleviate future pain, but not enough to put him to sleep because I need to check his reactions.

''this is going to hurt, but don't scream, I need to concentrate'' I said looking at the woman who was to remove the infected skin.

The woman nodded and I started with the process

as I began to introduce my scalpel and started to extract the skin I noticed that there was an incredible amount of pus, that means that the body was fighting to heal itself, but the disease is much stronger than the body's defenses.

The woman was complaining quite a lot, but luckily, she was not screaming after working on extracting the skin for 2 hours I had finished and started to apply the ointments for healing

After finishing the procedure I returned her to her cell and continued with her companions, this day was incredibly long because I had to treat someone who had almost 80% of her body infected but was still conscious.

After almost 18 hours of surgery, I had finished with the other 9 test subjects and went back to do the safety procedure of burning the clothes and testing by poking my fingers.

286 AC sixth moon

After 1 moon of experiments, I can say that the treatment offered by Archmaester Pylos is a success.

Test subject 301: subject showed improvement, infection was stopped

Test subject 302: the disease came back and showed itself extremely aggressive

Test subject 303: subject showed improvement, infection stopped

Test subject 304: subject showed improvement, infection stopped

Test subject 305: disease returned and was extremely aggressive

Test subject 306: disease returned and was extremely aggressive, subject went insane and had to be Eliminated

Test subject 307: disease returned and was extremely aggressive, subject went crazy and had to be eliminated.

Test subject 308: subject showed improvement, infection stopped

Test subject 309: disease returned and was extremely aggressive, subject went insane and had to be eliminated

Test subject 310: disease returned and was extremely aggressive, subject went crazy and had to be eliminated.

(After the analysis of 10 test subjects for 1 moon, under my experience and the scientific method I declare that the Archmaester Pylos method is efficient but only 40% effective, it is possible to repeat the process and increase the chances of healing someone, but I need more supplies, I recommend to give more funds to continue deepening the investigation)

To my surprise, this treatment finally showed effectiveness in healing people, but it is also the most invasive and requires that the scarce morphine produced be invested.

As I was getting ready to continue my research, when 4 more doctors came into my room

''What's going on, this is an isolation room, no one is allowed in,'' I said, turning away from my companions.

''The king is delighted with the successes of your research and has allocated more funds so that you can find a definitive cure, he has also allocated the little penicillin that is produced and some microscopes to speed up the research'' said my companion.

''So they allocated you to help me with the research?'', I said happily

''That's right so far only your research is bearing fruit'' said another of my colleagues.

''I see, we'll secure your clothes, we are going to work with Archmaester Pylos' procedure'' I said as I entered the infected's enclosure.

During this moon was when we started to make plenty of discoveries about the disease because I finally had a microscope to observe the bacteria that produces the disease

This time I had a lot of funds at my disposal and I could do the procedures as many times as necessary, but with an average effectiveness of 40% too many resources were used to cure one person.

That is why I had dedicated myself to verify if penicillin was useful to eliminate this bacterium, with the help of my colleagues we managed to make a culture of the penicillin mold, and we began to make tests on the pus, which we were extracting from infected people

Until we could see that the bacteria that produced the disease died shortly after coming into contact, with this information we began to try to apply penicillin in the treatment.

We performed a topical test by placing penicillin on the skin and waiting for it to be absorbed before applying the healing ointment, which after some tests we determined increased the chances of a successful treatment up to 60%.

But finally, we found the definitive way to cure the disease by injecting the penicillin into the muscle, which after some time causes the disease to stop, but leaving the dead skin on top, so we must also remove it to avoid a reactivation of the disease.

With this treatment, we had achieved an effectiveness close to 98%, after almost 1 moon of research we had created the cure for this disease, although the disease is not common in the seven kingdoms, there have been disastrous cases as what happened in old town that killed 50% of the population with this we can cure everyone who is infected the problem is the costs.

Currently, penicillin is extremely scarce because growing this mold is complicated, since another type of mold can be produced that does not have the antibacterial capabilities of penicillin, plus it is necessary to use morphine to clean the dead skin because I don't think anyone can bear to have the dead skin removed with nothing to help with the pain.

Making our treatment although effective is too expensive, and we do not know if the king will continue to offer free treatment of this disease, it is much simpler and cheaper to shoot with a crossbow and burn the body of an infected person, only time will tell what method will be offered.

283 AC eighth moon

After much work, we had managed to heal all the infected, after constant checks we made sure that the infection did not continue to be active, and we released the healthy test subjects, this is great progress.

But not without deaths under our tireless work many people died, under my experiments many people died, but I was not the only one among all my colleagues, we had caused the death of more than 86 infected people

This kind of death should not discourage us because it was an acceptable cost, their deaths will save countless lives in the future because now there is a cure for this contagious disease.

For the moment now we are only dedicated to heal the people who come here, but the work now is extremely little, and I have dedicated myself to create penicillin cultures in order to increase the production of this rare but effective medicine.

''Ernst, the king is coming to see you, he has a special mission for you,'' said a colleague.

''What, why is the king coming here?, it's dangerous, he could get infected'' I said scared.

''He's not going to enter the compound, he's nearby, he's just going to send you a letter with the instructions of your new job'' said my partner calming me down

''Ah, I understand what he wants me to do'' he said while he was sterilizing my tools

We'll have to wait for the letter to arrive'' said the doctor while grinding some plants.

After waiting about 20 minutes, the letter the king had sent was delivered through the door to us

(Ernst, I must say that your scientific discoveries have left me amazed, you have made more progress than I had thought, managing to cure this virulent disease, I know you have done your part for the welfare of the kingdom, but I must ask you to return to work tirelessly for a project even more important than finding the cure, for a doctor, this request must be a sacrilege, but I needed you to find a way to create a form of reduced contagion of the disease, a vaccine as I have named it, I need you to infect healthy people with samples of Greyscale and find a way for the disease to spread, but not with such destructive effects, as we already know from the information in many books those who get sick with Greyscale become immune if they recover from the disease, if we can infect them at an early age we can prevent the disease from spreading in the first place, I have gotten volunteers some paid others who have been offered a way to pay for their crimes by helping humanity, so I order you to find a way to make my request come true).

''What does it say, Ernst?'', said my companion.

''The king wants us to infect healthy people in a controlled way'', I said, touching the nose of my mask.

''What? why? It's stupid, we fought too hard to find a cure, why would we do that?'' said my partner almost shouting.

''Do you remember Archmaester Pylos' book that people who are cured of the disease become immune to it, even if they are in frequent contact with infected people?'', I said looking at my companion

''Yes true, but it's too risky, it could go wrong and start spreading'' said my partner worried.

''That's why we must find a way to make this a reality, that it is possible to infect someone, but that the disease is controllable and less contagious'' I said while sitting on a chair.

''Ok and do you have any idea how to start'' said my partner sighing

''If they make direct contact the bacteria will be contagious with all its effects, why don't we kill the bacteria with penicillin and use it to try to infect a test subject'' I said as I thought about what to do.

''It might help, well, we have something to start with, let's get to work ''said my partner as he entered the infected area.

286 AC twelfth moon

I must say that creating this vaccine was the most difficult test of all, even with a seemingly infinite budget and almost 100 doctors under my command, the work was extremely difficult.

Our first attempts to create this vaccine failed brutally because the volunteers were infected and we had to treat them with the normal treatment.

Fortunately, the supply of penicillin has grown considerably, but this was not without problems, one volunteer reacted violently to this substance, for many of our attempts we could not stabilize him which caused his death, this antibiotic is the best against infections, but apparently it can also cause the death of some people.

But one thing we had were volunteers, the king had offered 10 golden dragons to those who volunteered to be our test subjects, at worst they would only be left with a little hardened skin from our treatment or in very rare cases death

But we had finally achieved what we were ordered to do, a way of infecting people with reduced symptoms.

We worked with the pus of the infected, we managed to inject the dead bacteria after making contact with penicillin, which caused the disease to the volunteers producing the temporary hardening of the area, but with the passage of days the skin becomes soft again, then performing the test of fire we placed those same people in contact with an infected and waiting a few days they had no symptoms, officially they were immune to Greyscale, the last test was to check if they could infect someone, but they could not, leaving this experiment as a success

Nine moons of work finally paid off, the king was planning to make the vaccine compulsory, but he would need more doctors than he has, but to my surprise he was already working on it

He had created a medical academy in the city and because of my contributions and devotion to progress the king had given me the position of director, and I was in charge of training more doctors to start a massive vaccination against common diseases in the future.

Giving the academy almost 5 million golden dragons to continue the creation of more types of vaccines and their improvements.

Luckily, I was able to get out without catching the disease.

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