I can understand how “modern person thrown into the past gets by pretending to be a healer/doctor” is as surprisingly common of a trope as it is. I mean I’m fluent enough at bullshitting to be pretty sure I could pull it off to impersonate a doctor in any time pre-1800s. If I have no idea what something is or how to treat it, I could just get the opinion of the other whatever-passes-as-medical-professionals around, but if their suggestions sound like bullshit I’m not doing it. And I’ll beat the shit out of anyone suggesting bloodletting or mercury. With my healing stick. I’ve tied little bells on it, that jingle comically with every smack.
The awesome curative powers of my healing stick come from two separate sources: Placebo, and me using it to beat anyone trying to give my patients mercury.
Ooooh you reminded me of that protocol I wrote about how to reinvent penicilin with only alchemical tools. You know. Just in case I did end up dumped in the past and needed a stable income.
w
what’s the protocol?
I am so glad you asked! I unfortunately lost the protocol because it was probably on my laptop, but I remember the broad strokes. So! In case anyone does end up stuck in the middle ages and can find a kindly old alchemist willing to lend you his gear, here’s the revamped Penicilin (Re)Discovery Protocol!
0. WASH YOUR GODDAMN HANDS.
We’re not working in a lab here, cross-conatamination WILL happen. Your job is to minimize it as much as possible. If you end up in a place where soap hasn’t been invented yet, wash your hands in distilled alcohol. Your skin won’t thank you, but you can afford all the nice hand creams after you cure the plague and get rich.
Find some Penicillium mushrooms!
Yes, penicilin is produced by mushrooms, though Ascomycotes are usually called moulds, it’s a fungus, and it makes me laugh to call it a mushroom. Plus, in the middle ages, mushrooms were known to have medicinal properties, so you’ll get a lot farther by calling them mushrooms rather than molds.
First thing you need: mouldy fruit. Oranges, or cantaloupes are preferred.
Here’s the thing: mold is everywhere, so getting it will be the easiest part. The tricky part start with identifying the correct mold. You don’t want to feed your patients black mold, do you?
So. Leave some fruit out. The more the better, because you want to up your chances. Then let it rot in warm and humid places. After a while, pick any fruit that looks white on the outside and green in the middle:
Not the best picture, but that’s what it should look like.
2. Transplanting your (potential) Penicillium mushrooms
Until you get it on a plate it’s damn near impossible to tell which mold you got. Get ready for some trial and error because you will have to sift through a lot of unwanted mold. You might want to wear a mask.
First you need something to transplant it onto. Making modern agar plates is probably impossible but thankfully not needed. You just need:
Glass plates (the kind that can be closed, you want to minimize cross contamination)
1-2 cup of Hot water (preferably distilled, ask your alchemist if he can do that)
1 cup whole milk (should be 13g of lactose per cup, if your Penicillium won’t grow adjust the water-milk ration in favor of milk)
If available: Instead of milk use corn steep liquor. Unfortunately only available after America was discovered, so YMMW, but Penicillium LOVES this stuff. It will make your life SO much easier if it’s available.
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon Yeast extract (get it from a baker)
3-6 teaspoons Gelatin (get it from a butcher)
Disclaimer: The ratio of each of the ingredients will have to be adjusted depending on the purity of the ingredients and on the conventional measuring sizes of the place you end up.
Gently mix it all in and pour out into the plates, let it solidify. If you end up dumped far enough that such refinement isn’t possible, make bone broth and strain it through cheesecloth several times to make it as clear as possible, then mix it 5/6 broth and 1/6 milk. Again, if available, use corn steep liquor, but if not milk is fine. Add gelatin (should still be able to get it from the butcher) as needed to solidify it. I’m afraid experimentation will be needed depending on the resources you will be working with.
When you’re done, you should have something like this:
Now that you have your plates, run an inoculation loop through a flame to sterilize it.
Something like this. Wave it through the air to cool it so you don’t kill your mold, grab it from your fruit and geeeeeently spread it on top of your improvised agar without breaking the surface of the gelatin!
You can see the motions on this one pretty well. Close your plates, stack them about a meter/3ft from the fireplace. Judge for yourself, but ideally somewhere you would consider comfortably warm (20-24°C).
3. Identifying your Penicillium Mushrooms
If all went well, you are going to have something that looks like this:
Well, realistically, it will look something like this:
We’re not actually doing it in a lab, after all. But IDEALLY, it will look like the above. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you just need to be able to identify Penicillium molds for now.
IDEALLY, on the plate that matches the description of the penicillium mold you’ll see an exclusion zone of bacteria around the mold, like the fourth plate in the second row, so you know you have a potential winner, but if you managed to avoid bacterial growth you need to take a few extra steps.
Penicillium molds have characteristic rings of growth, grey-green-white rings. They’re easy to differentiate from bacteria because the molds are fuzzy and the bacteria as smooth and slimy. In the above picture, there are four plates that potentially have what we want, and two are less certain than others. Wash out the unwanted ones, make new agar plates, sterilize your inoculation loop and transplant your best candidates. You might need to do this several times.
Two types are confirmed to produce penicilin: P. chrysogenum and P. rubens.
The former is far more widely used today, but since we’re sourcing them from literally thin air, we’re more likely to get P. rubens, but unless you’re a mycologist you probably won’t be able to tell the difference. Thankfully you won’t need to, because they both produce penicillin. Which brings me to the next step.
4. Confirming it’s the penicillin producing mushroom
We’re gonna need more agar plates for this one, and believe it or not, you’re gonna need to mix blood into your agar. Wash your hands THROUGHLY.
(Theoretically you can get away with just milk, but identifying the correct bacterial colony on white agar is going to be a nightmare, so just add some sheep blood to your agar, conventionally it’s about 5% by volume but you might need more to make it)
You need some gram-positive bacteria, preferably of the Bacillota type. Please don’t go out and find a patient with fucking botulism or tetanus, you need to live long enough to make the cure. Instead, if you have a vagina, scrape some of the white, mucousy stuff from there and plant it on your plate. If you don’t have your own vagina, a borrowed one is fine. Penicilin also works on Treponema pallidum, so if you get a syphilis-affected prostitute that should also work. Just wear gloves.
Ideally you get something like this.
This is actually Lactobacillus brevis, but Lactobacillus colonies all look relatively the same. The important thing is that it’s all gram-positive, and will therefore be affected by penicillin.
Take new plates again, plant your Penicillium mold in the middle, and the bacteria all around it, getting as close to the center as possible. You can put down a paper marker for the mold. Wait for about 20 days.
Ideally, on at least one plate, you will get something like this:
This is literally a textbook example of testing antibiotics, but the Zone of Inhibition is what you’re looking for. It means the mold is releasing a compound to kill the competing bacteria for resources, in this case, Beta-lactam antibiotic, or penicillin. Make sure to pick the one with the WIDEST ZoI, because that’s the one that produces most penicillin.
So now we have the root stock, but our problems have just begun. This is the part where you’re absolutely going to need an alchemist’s help.
The problem is that a human body is not a petri dish. It’s quite a bit larger. And you want the good bacteria destroying stuff without all the nasty contaminants, so you need a SHITLOAD of mold producing a LOT of penicillin, and then you need a way to filter it. You are going to need actual lab equipment for that, or near as they had it.
Since I lost the original protocol I’m going to need to do research all over again how to do that with alchemy equipment (or at least a microbrewery), so that will be in the next installment.
Fascinating.
You have ro ferment that shit, it’s actually pretty hellish and difficult.
The other fun fact is that the strains we started using for maximum effectiveness were irradiated to produce extra effective strains after a global search, which you won’t be able to do so you’ll be making low dose antibiotics, keep that in mind, and also having to breed it.
Being real inventing penicillin is off my list of historical time travel shit to do and I’m going to be inventing a washing machine instead.
I have no idea how accurate all of this is, but I’m reblogging it just for the demonstration of how HARD this medicine stuff was to figure out.
I’m uncertain whether glass of the sort you would need would even be available. That seems like the most difficult part of this process. You might get stuck with pewter, which is, you know, lead.
Meanwhile I’m over here going, “Wait, what do you mean ‘if you’re in a place where soap hasn’t been invented’? If they haven’t invented soap, invent soap, that’s SO MUCH EASIER than the rest of this.”
HOW 2 INVENT SOAP:
INVENT TALLOW. Get some animal fat. Chop it up, add some salt and water, and cook it for a few hours. Scoop the melted liquid fat off the top and filter it through something to get any meaty bits that might still be in there out. When it cools down, it will turn back into solid fat, and you can repeat the process as many times as you want to get more non-fat stuff out.
INVENT POTASH. Fill a container with wood ashes (hardwoods work best). Then pour in rain water. Then let it soak. After a while, collect the liquid, which will now be a horrible caustic alkali solution. If you dry this out, you’ll get crystals of potassium hydroxide, but you don’t really need to, because the next step is…
MELT THE TALLOW AND PUT SOME POTASH WATER IN IT. This will be stupid hot and there will visibly be chemistry happening. Stir it up good for a while while absolutely not getting it on your hands.
Congratulations, you have now invented soap. Aren’t you glad you did this part before you tried the penicillin?
I have no idea why I’m thinking about this post again, but I am, so even without penicillin, some thoughts about how a modern person could be the past’s greatest doctor* with minimal effort:
I think the real thing we’re all glossing over here is that to succeed as a modern style doctor back in the Olden Days the real thing you’re going to need (and which antibiotics and hand washing cannot replace), is a fuck load of charisma
Stopping to take stock of himself and actually enjoy the fresh air, area man Michael Perez relaxed his overwhelming sense of anxiety for just a moment Thursday, giving a pack of coyotes the opening they had long been waiting for. According to sources, Perez had gone on the hike to blow off steam and finally found the willpower to let go of his punishing angst for a peaceful moment, a change in demeanor which was immediately sensed by a pack of vicious, hungry coyotes that decided now was the time to strike.
ideal living situation is what i call the ‘sitcom special’ : having all your closest friends live in the same apartment building or neighborhood where you each have your own space but can wander in and out of eachothers homes at will, seemingly always welcome and never at bad times. and also all of you only have jobs when its important to the plot.
I’ll never not be amused by the fact that I can drop the words “crucifix nail nipples” into a conversation and some of you who have been with me since the livejournal days will join me in the flashbacks, screaming and crying all the way.
I require context. Because this is a very interesting start of a story, and now I need the rest of it. Could I get a link, or a summary, or something? Pretty please?
All right buckle the fuck up kids, it’s the year 2012 and I’ve just been handed what should be an easy editing gig by my senior editor. It’s a vampire erotica story because one of the final Twilight movies is about to come out, and everything is vampires. Everything. I haven’t edited a single thing in months which isn’t about vampires. I am ready, I can do this. So I open the file and notice there’s a typo in the title, which really should have been my first inkling that something horrendous was about to go down, but you see I’m not quite dead inside yet so I carry on, bushy tailed and bright eyed with my faith in humanity intact. It’ll be dead by page 24, but I don’t know that yet. I’m just editing one more vampire boner fest.
The MC is a girl who we’ll call Sue. Sue is a Good Girl™, Sue is Not Like Other Girls™, she is pale and awkward and a virgin and has somehow managed to find herself a Bad Boy™ for a boyfriend. We’ll call him Dickhead.
Now Dickhead as previously stated is a bit of dick, he tries to pressure Sue into sex because he knows she is The One™ but he loves her really so it’s okay. Except it’s not okay because Sue is a Good Girl™ and holding out till marriage which he’s fine with except he’s got such a bad case of blue balls that one night walking home an attractive stranger lures him into an alley with the words “hey stud” and he follows, dick out before she’s even finished her sentence. Well turns out that was a mistake for Dickhead because she’s a vampire, but not just any vampire, a Dick Biting Vampire. So what started out as a skeevy blow job behind a club that he’ll feel bad about in the morning, turns into him being bitten on the dick and drained of his life essence and left for dead. Except DBV fucked up and now he’s a vampire. Are you still with me? Good, cause it’s about to get weirder.
Realizing he is now an abomination, Dickhead flees, becoming a creature of the night and feeding on animals rather than humans to repent for being such an asshole in life. Sue meanwhile is heartbroken, but carries on valiantly with her life and goes to bed each night crying for the loss of her One True Love™ who she would do anything to bring back. Well guess what Sue, Dickhead never really left you! He’s been “instinctively protecting her from rapists” by hiding out on her roof and fighting hobos who try to get to her open window via the fire escape for months now. Because that’s not fucking terrifying at all.
Upon learning of his predicament and how it happened, Sue can do nothing but blame herself. Oh if only she’d let him touch her secret places, then perhaps all of this could be avoided! Meanwhile Dickhead is having another dilemma of his own, realizing too late that his vampire powers have given him super senses and now he can smell her blood and he can’t decide whether he wants to get with her or eat her. And I don’t mean in the French sense. But he is strong! And over comes his base manly vampire instincts and neither rapes not kills her. Hurrah! And this is so romantic that Sue gives it up, but not before she launches into a theory about how in all fairy tales, True Love saves the day, so maybe her magical pure vagina that has never been touched by anyone, not even her, can bring him back to life. So Dickhead being a dickhead agrees and rips her clothes off, but not before he takes one last moment to marvel at the beauty of her purity, because he will never again look on her again and know she is Pure.
If you’ve only vomited once by now, I applaud your resolve.
So they hop on the good foot and do the nasty, except she is literally so pure in spirit, her flesh burns his. And I quote you from memory because these words are burned into my soul: “her breasts bit into his hands, like crucifix nail nipples tearing at
his flesh, but he did not care because he loved her so and couldn’t
stop”
This phrase haunts me. I dread that it will be the last thing I think about on my death bed and my last words will literally be “god fucking dammit” as I die, carrying that mental image with me into the afterlife. My own solace is in knowing that I inflicted it on other people too, like @ahzuri who is somehow still with me after all these years.
When the magical burning sex fails to heal him and leaves her bruised, battered and broken with “a dainty blue bells of bruises around her secret flower” (I am genuinely quoting this, I could never make something as horrendous as this up without being on acid) Dickhead leaves. Yeah. Off he fucks, leaving her to the mercy of the hobos at her window, and into the night to be the true monster he really is. But wait, there’s more. Remember the dick biting vampire? Well turns out she has figured out she made him into a vampire and has also been stalking HIM and is totally jealous of Sue, so tries to kill her. But again Sues Purity saves her, because sex before marriage which was done out of True Love is not a sin, so she is still a spiritual virgin and I’ll be honest, I started drinking heavily at this point and it’s all a bit of a blur.
A fight ensues some pages later after Dickhead returns, realizing the mistake he has made. And he rescues Sue from the Dick Biter, but not before he assaults Dick Biter, and calls her a slut for luring innocent men into alleys cuts her heart out by cutting her breasts off, at which point i screamed “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU REACH THE HEART” and my brain short circuited completely and I have no idea how it ends because I realized there was 30 pages left and my soul couldn’t take it. I emailed the chief editor like ?????!!!!!!????!!!!!! and the book was immediately pulled from the work line and the author dismissed from the publishing house. Turns out she was a friend of a friend and that was how she got the manuscript past our entry levels for requirement.
And that’s the story of how an author sent me death threats for over a month because I stopped her shitty vampire porn from ever seeing the light of day. You’re all fucking WELCOME.
