"That bastard..."
"Walking around with his head held high like he's something special..."
Some people looked at me with admiration, while others gazed with envy. But in the end, admiration and envy weren't all that different. If you could receive admiration while suppressing jealousy, you'd practically be a god. But I was far from a god—I was just a foreigner with yellow skin and black hair. How could I ever be a god?
I had been thinking about this for a long time, so I didn't pay much attention to the whispers behind my back.
"Alright, let's follow this."
"Yes."
Besides, I had the incredibly reliable Robert Liston by my side. No matter how much those fools tried to mess with me, he could easily shut them down with just a glare.
"Ah... So this is how the artery runs."
"I've never seen one so intact before."
Joseph and Alfred were also by my side, protecting me. Was this what they called "human luck"? Or was it the result of good deeds from a past life? I didn't know, but one thing was clear—I was lucky.
"Down here. This must be the vein, right?"
Of course, my skills were exceptional. It was almost frustrating that the only people I could show off to were these guys. Honestly, with skills like these, I could easily make it in the 21st century.
"That's right. Do you see it? The thicker one?"
"Yes."
"It's puzzling. How can the artery be thinner? It's where blood gushes out from the heart."
"Ah."
As I briefly reminisced about my glorious past life, Dr. Robert quickly brought me back to reality.
"You don't know this, do you?"
The artery was relatively much thicker.
"It's thick, but... shouldn't it expand under pressure to be considered normal?"
Ah, now I understood. If that was the case, then it made sense. The current state of anatomy... well, if I had to categorize it, it would be macroscopic anatomy, right? No one knew about the structures that required a microscope to see. Truly, no one.
Honestly, even though Dr. Robert Liston's status wasn't comparable to mine in the 21st century, it was still impressive.
"Yes, there must be some difference in the vascular walls, right?"
"Hmm, you're probably right. You're quite sharp."
The professor was momentarily impressed by my words before turning to address the others. It was time to teach after the discussion.
"Anyway, there must be some difference, but we don't know what it is yet. But look, these sprawling vessels are veins. We didn't need to know this before, since anesthesia wasn't available, and surgeries considering these vessels weren't possible. But now they are, so keep that in mind. I knew the structures even before anesthesia was available."
As I listened, a sense of respect began to grow within me. It was inevitable.
"Even though they thought it might be useless, they still studied it."
It was an era of many shortcomings. No, it was more than just shortcomings—it was a barbaric time, dark enough to make you realize that the darkest hour is just before dawn. Yet, Professor Robert was still striving.
"I'll make sure your efforts are rewarded from now on."
I barely resisted the urge to pat his shoulder. He had told me to call him "brother," and he treated me like a younger sibling, but his smiling face was still intimidating. Plus, he had stuffed cotton up his nose to block the smell, which made him even scarier. It wasn't that the cotton looked scary—it actually looked funny. But if you're scared of cotton stuffed in someone's nose, are you even human?
'He's not human, so...'
I held back and kept quiet.
"Alright, let's dig deeper."
Just as I was holding back, he suggested digging deeper. There was more to find besides the vein.
'Aren't you going to look for the nerves...?'
I didn't feel like saying it. Until now, they hadn't been clinically important. Even if they prepared for the unexpected, responding to something that had already happened and imagining how to respond were entirely different things.
'But they do know about the existence of nerves. They even know their shape.'
Surprisingly, descriptions of the brain and spinal cord had been around for quite some time. However, the distribution and function of the nerves branching out from the spinal cord were still a mystery. But they at least knew the general shape.
When you think about it, anatomy was a field that progressed by exploring what humans looked like, even without knowing what things were. In that sense, humans were more remarkable than we thought. But anatomy was still in the realm of exploration, with little connection to clinical medicine.
How long would it take for the two to fully merge?
'Maybe it won't take as long as you think.'
Of course, "not long" was relative from a historical perspective. If you considered the individuals involved, you could roughly estimate how many people would live through that time.
My coming here wasn't entirely a coincidence. Maybe it wasn't even Earth, but somewhere else. Lately, I've been thinking about that more often.
So, I pretended not to know and spread apart the biceps and the underlying brachialis muscle.
"Here?"
"No, further down."
Then I realized something else. These guys hadn't even standardized anatomical positioning yet. Up, down—how could they communicate with such vague terms? They hadn't even decided whether "up" meant toward the ceiling or toward the head.
'Well... looking at the cadavers, their positions are all over the place.'
Now that I thought about it, they really just brought the cadavers in and dissected them as they were placed.
'That's why it looked even more horrifying.'
Without formalin preservation, the cadavers looked fresh, and their varied positions made it feel like I was standing among real corpses. It was overwhelming, not knowing where to start or what to do.
'Actually, it's a good thing.'
On the other hand, it meant there were plenty of opportunities for me to make an impression.
'Let's make the thirsty dig the well.'
With that thought, I glanced at the professor. How could someone look so intimidating with cotton stuffed up their nose? But because of that, I hadn't felt much discomfort so far. Seeing a face like that made people naturally want to be considerate.
"Further down... here?"
"No, not that down."
"Ah, here?"
"Not there either."
"Uh... here?"
I moved the scalpel toward the patient's head. In standard anatomy, that would be "up."
"No! Down!"
"Uh... here...?"
Next, I moved it toward the abdomen. Strictly speaking, that was also "down," right? At least it wasn't outward. Of course, I was standing next to the patient's right arm, and in standard anatomy, the direction I had just moved was considered "out." Toward the abdomen was "in," and the opposite was "out."
I was about to move it again in frustration, but seeing that he was about to say something meaningless, I realized my life might be in danger, so I quickly adjusted.
"Here...?"
"Yes!"
"Ah, but..."
"But what?"
Of course, I already knew a way to immediately calm him down.
"What's this?"
I carefully hooked my finger around a taut structure running alongside the blood vessel. It was a nerve, designed to remain functional even under tension, so it wouldn't break easily when the body moved. In other words, pulling on it a bit wouldn't sever it. In fact, even cutting it with a scalpel required skill.
"Ah... that's a nerve."
"So this is a nerve? The organ that helps our body move, right?"
"Yes. We don't know how it works, but..."
"Then it must be really important, right?"
"Hmm."
"If we use anesthesia, it might not just be amputations but other surgeries too... so maybe we should preserve them?"
I said this while observing Robert. It wasn't about reading the room—I had already done that. This man... he clearly dreamed of advancing surgery. He was practically the king of amputations, but now he was thinking about other types of surgeries. He probably had no idea what techniques to use yet. Cutting out a diseased area without thought was vastly different from precisely excising or correcting only what was necessary.
It wasn't easy. Even a genius needed guidance.
"That's right. That makes sense. So... neuroanatomy will become clinically important now."
Until now, it hadn't been important. And why would it be? If you cut a blood vessel, blood comes out, and if blood comes out, people die. That had been known since ancient times. In contrast, if you cut a nerve, it was just... whatever. In amputations, tying off nerves was more about preference than medical necessity.
"You're very meticulous."
"It's my first time, so I'm being extra careful."
"That's the mark of a good doctor. It'll only get better from here."
Anyway, I impressed upon Professor Robert and everyone around us the importance of nerves and continued the dissection. Even though the session lasted over three hours, the area I had worked on was limited to the upper arm. Compared to Robert and the others, my pace was ridiculously slow. But no one complained.
"I had no idea nerves were so intricately distributed."
"If you really dig into it, some go to the skin, and some go to the muscles. Is there a difference between them?"
"Who knows? But... they probably didn't make it that way for no reason."
Today, they had nearly completed a diagram of the nerves in the upper arm. I say "nearly" because even I, with my unfamiliarity with the scalpel, couldn't fully map out the complex nerve distribution. Most of the finer details had been cut away. But from a 19th-century perspective, it was groundbreaking.
Robert, a devout believer, looked up at the sky. It was already night, so all I could see was a black, smog-filled sky. But he was looking at something beyond that.
"You really might be a gift from God. Our skin doesn't move on its own... so nerves must do more than just control movement. I already knew that, but... nerves are truly mysterious organs. You, who pondered this, are truly remarkable."
"No, I'm just... you're overpraising me."
"Overpraising? Nonsense."
"By the way... isn't your house over there?"
"Ah, I'm heading to the journalist's house."
"Huh?"
He seemed to be in a good mood, but was he going to make it even better by picking a fight? That's what I thought, but his next words were unexpected.
"Tell them to write about you. You're not just a doctor. Emphasize that you're a genius."