Chapter 30

New book uploaded, seeking collections, and recommendations.

Zhu Jishi has become famous, very famous, even more so than he had originally imagined!

To be fair, Judge Abbott's ruling was not improper, fully in line with the legal provisions of the time. Moreover, his judgment was not a final ruling; Zhu Jishi could still appeal to the Court of Appeal for England and Wales, and even take the case all the way to Queen Victoria.

Additionally, the Royal College of Physicians did not seek compensation from Zhu Jishi, nor did they intend to burn him at the stake. They only required him to publish an apology in the newspaper. Of course, defamation was a criminal offense in Britain at the time, but the Metropolitan Police of London had not yet filed criminal charges against Zhu Jishi.

In fact, even if the London police did file criminal charges, it wouldn't be a big deal. According to the lawyer Jones, in contemporary Britain, even the crime of attempting to assassinate the Queen, if the Queen was not killed, would result in a maximum sentence of life exile to Australia (Queen Victoria was attacked once in 1840 and twice in 1842, with one of the attackers being exiled and the other two found not guilty). If a scientist committed defamation, the most severe punishment would be deportation (historically, Marx was deported for publishing articles attacking the Prussian government).

Therefore, it cannot be said that Zhu Jishi was being persecuted, nor can the British government and the Royal College of Physicians be compared to the Roman Catholic Church that burned Bruno. In fact, much of this incident was orchestrated by Zhu Jishi himself to attract attention, and was then hyped by Engels and the *Polar Star* newspaper, becoming a piece of dirt used by the Chartists to smear British society. The Royal College of Physicians, who had provoked Zhu Jishi, might be considered the stepping stone to his fame, and they might be the real victims.

Before the trial began, Zhu Jishi had already prepared his counterattack. He sent several groundbreaking papers to several famous scientific journals in Britain and France, including *The Lancet*, and to some renowned newspapers, introducing the methods of bacterial staining and bacterial culture, as well as the "discovery" of three pathogenic bacteria: Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Vibrio cholerae, and Staphylococcus aureus!

These three pathogenic bacteria were the culprits behind the terrifying diseases of tuberculosis, cholera, and puerperal fever (puerperal fever is caused by multiple bacteria, with Staphylococcus aureus being one of them). Now, any pathologist, microbiologist, or even chemist could witness the true appearance of these three bacteria based on the methods and procedures outlined in Zhu Jishi's papers. They would also quickly discover how rampant these bacteria were in hospitals of the time.

Along with announcing these major discoveries, Zhu Jishi also proposed several methods to eliminate bacteria, such as flame sterilization, Zhu's disinfection method (which is essentially pasteurization), boiling disinfection, autoclaving, and intermittent heating sterilization.

For Zhu Jishi, who had a master's degree in medicine, these methods of observing bacteria and sterilization were simple common knowledge, but for the scientists and medical professionals of the time, they were groundbreaking scientific discoveries that left them in awe!

With these scientific discoveries and inventions, it was effortless to bring down the quacks of the Royal College of Physicians, as the pathogenic bacteria were now visible to all European medical professionals, microbiologists, and chemists. Anyone who denied their existence would be admitting to being a fool, and fools cannot become scientists or doctors.

However, the reaction of the mainstream media and scientific community in Europe and America over the following month still slightly surprised Zhu Jishi, who had been mentally prepared.

...

"... A scene that has shocked the entire civilized world has appeared in the courts of the so-called most civilized and advanced empire, the British Empire. A judge named James Abbott, a servant of Her Majesty, has, according to British law, convicted a scientific truth of defamation! In an era when the great scientist Mr. Jason Zhu has revealed pathogenic bacteria under the microscope, the British court has declared that such bacteria do not exist!" — *Le Figaro* (France)

"... It is truly unbelievable that a scene reminiscent of the trial of Giordano Bruno by the Inquisition has reappeared in Britain in 1843! A scientist who may be the most outstanding of our time has been convicted of defamation by the London County Court for his theories that offended the Royal College of Physicians! And all the scientists in the world know that the theories of the Eastern scientist named Jason Zhu are entirely correct, except perhaps for the British scientists..." — *The Tribune* (USA)

"Today we are once again shocked, but we should not be, for this country has always treated the working people and the truth in this manner. The main reason the high and mighty lords have found Mr. Jason Zhu guilty is probably because his articles exposed how dirty the so-called 'charity hospitals' in Britain are and how harmful they are to the health of the working people who seek treatment there! Now the bourgeois lords are in a panic, trying to stifle the truth in its cradle..." — *Rheinische Zeitung* (German Confederation)

"Has the leader of the world in our time, the British Empire, fallen to the point where it cannot tolerate the truth? What do they intend to tell the world with this absurd and unbelievable trial? Is the dignity of the British Empire so inviolable that even scientific truth is as insignificant as dung before its supreme authority?" — *Frankfurter Zeitung* (German Confederation)

"Foolish! Foolish trial! Foolish Royal College of Physicians! Foolish judge! This is our evaluation of this absurd trial. A group of fools have, through this ridiculous trial, drastically lowered the status of Britain, which has always respected science, in the eyes of the people of civilized nations around the world, almost making it as ignorant as the recently defeated China under Tartar rule." — *The Times* (UK)

After understanding the correctness and importance of Zhu Jishi's discoveries and theories, the mainstream newspapers in Europe and America, including those in Britain, immediately directed all their criticism at the Royal College of Physicians and the London County Court. The newspapers outside Britain also used a tone of schadenfreude to mock the British Empire, which had been unexpectedly embarrassed.

The happiest, of course, were the French across the English Channel. Although the Napoleonic Wars had ended more than twenty years ago, the French still harbored intense resentment towards the British. Any event that embarrassed the British was a source of joy for them. Therefore, French newspapers began to mock their British neighbors with sarcastic and derisive tones just three days after the trial on January 20th.

The French scientific community also quickly came to the defense of Zhu Jishi, this "conscientious scientist persecuted by British authorities." Several prestigious French universities even sent him invitation letters, offering him positions as professors in their medical departments. What surprised Zhu Jishi the most was that the French Academy of Sciences sent him an invitation in early February 1843, hoping he would run for membership in the Academy!

On the same day Zhu Jishi received the invitation from the French Academy of Sciences, Engels, as a correspondent for the *Rheinische Zeitung Politisch-Ökonomische*, conducted an interview with him. However, at that time, Zhu Jishi did not know that the editor-in-chief of the *Rheinische Zeitung Politisch-Ökonomische* was Karl Marx...

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