Chapter 13

Since it's being handled by modern medicine, it naturally has to follow the principles of modern medicine. Garet steadied himself, then carefully examined the child again: his previous observation was correct; the child's face was swollen, and hives were visible on his face and hands, indicating an allergic reaction. He turned to the farmer woman who had brought the child in and continued to ask questions:

"Did he eat any strange fruit? Did he pick any flowers? Where did the child play this afternoon?"

"How could he play! Little Remi is very sensible; two years ago, he started helping with the household chores!"

Uh... I apologize. Garet wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He had yet to fully integrate the memories of his original body, so he couldn't recall his childhood right away. But in his previous life, children around seven or eight were still in elementary school!

Carrying a small schoolbag, going to school every day, he hadn't even started thinking about how to blow up the school yet!

However, Garet knew very well how mischievous children around seven or eight could be. In the emergency department in his past life, parents would bring in children every day, injured or sick for various bizarre reasons, challenging the limits of human imagination. Sometimes, what adults couldn't think of, the child's companions might know—

"Was there a child working with him? Can we call them to ask?"

Garet patiently asked. Before the farmer woman could answer, Edmund, the farmer who was holding the child, interjected:

"Yes, yes! Two or three! — What are you standing there for, go and call them!"

Someone immediately ran off. Garet furrowed his brow, continuing to think hard, trying to deduce other possible causes of the illness. Meanwhile, the priest who had finished examining the child's throat idly joined in:

"What are you asking these questions for?"

Garet: "…"

To identify the allergen!

Garet bit his tongue, barely stopping the words from spilling out. The term "allergy" was so common in his previous life that even non-doctors knew what it meant. But in this unfamiliar world...

Garet was 100% sure that the curious priest would ask for a detailed explanation. How could he explain it?

—An allergic reaction, also known as a hypersensitivity reaction, is an abnormal adaptive immune response that occurs when the body is exposed to certain antigens, leading to physiological dysfunction or tissue damage?

It's very simple, very clear, just one sentence in the textbook...

Explaining it would be deadly!

Not to mention in this world, even in his previous life, if you asked a non-medical person to explain the term "allergy," and placed the entire 53-volume medical textbook in front of them, they would struggle to flip through it for half an hour before shouting:

"Which book explains allergies?"

Exactly, half an hour, and they still wouldn't know which book to look in...

Fortunately, Garet was a deputy director in the emergency department in his previous life, and he had extensive experience communicating with patients and their families. He organized his words and slowly answered:

"I'm asking these questions to see if the child has eaten, drunk, or touched anything he can't tolerate."

"Poisoning?"

"Not poisoning..."

Bro, who cast the detoxification spell just now? Wasn't it you?

After much effort and a lot of sweat, he finally managed to explain the symptoms of an allergic reaction. The child's playmates from earlier were also called in, three in total, the oldest not quite ten, the youngest looking only four or five. Garet asked the same questions again and indeed found something different:

"It was the salted fish! The salted fish hanging from the beam, I saw Remi break off a piece!"

"You're lying! Our Remi is the most well-behaved, he never eats without permission!"

The farmer woman, like a protective mother animal, jumped up, waving her arms and screeching. The mother's scream, the child's run, and the man's reprimand turned the hall into a chaotic mess, the volume reaching 120 decibels.

Garet was drenched in sweat. He shouted over the noise:

"Everyone, stop! — Who will go and get that salted fish?"

No matter how suspicious the salted fish seemed, in the field of modern medicine, no doctor would make a diagnosis without conducting tests. Garet held the salted fish in his left hand and a bowl of water in his right, examining it from all angles—

"What kind of fish is this?"

Forgive him, in his previous life, he only knew how to eat, not how to buy or cook. He could recognize the fish when it was cooked, but a raw fish...

He couldn't do it, couldn't recognize it, and had to give up.

Fortunately, someone else could. The priest of the Spring Goddess leaned in, studied it for a moment, and confidently concluded:

"It's cod. — Was it this that caused the problem?"

Cod, that's right. Garet nodded inwardly: people in this inland area rarely eat sea fish, so an allergic reaction from eating it once in a while is quite normal. He smiled and nodded at the priest:

"I think it's quite likely. But we still need to verify it."

"How do we verify it? — Make the child eat it again?"

"…"

Garet was drenched in sweat:

"His throat is already swollen like that, even if you make him eat it, he won't be able to swallow it!"

"What do we do then?"

How to conduct the test, generations of doctors in his previous life had already paved the way for their successors. Doctors didn't need to worry; if they suspected an allergy, they could just send the patient for a skin test.

A simple test costing a few dozen dollars, two pricks on the arm, a drop of the antigen, and results in half an hour. But now, now...

To perform a skin test, you first need the antigen!

Sterile, with no significant toxic side effects, and with measured protein content, the antigen is readily available in the lab in large boxes. But if you don't have the ready-made antigen, you have to extract it from the raw material...

Garet was a clinical specialist in his previous life, not a pharmaceutical specialist. But he had heard his pharmaceutical classmates complain about the process of extracting the antigen for their research: cutting the fish into pieces, grinding it with liquid nitrogen, adding acetone to remove fat, stirring, settling, and centrifuging...

The entire process took several days and nights, leaving them disheveled and unrecognizable. As for the amount of chemicals and equipment needed during this process, that goes without saying.

In his previous life, various seemingly ordinary conditions were supported by the country's strong industrial capabilities. But in this world, Garet could only be certain of one thing:

The only step he could currently achieve in the antigen preparation process was the first step of the first stage.

—Cutting the fish into pieces and soaking it in water...

That's it.

Then, directly jump to the last step of the skin test.

"Bring me two needles! And another bowl of water!"

On the child's left and right forearms, he dropped a drop of water and a drop of the water mixed with fish meat, respectively. Then, using two needles, he lightly pricked through the drops on the skin, breaking the skin but not causing it to bleed. Garet counted 60 beats on his wrist, wiped the drops off the child's arms, and then—

"What do we do now?"

"Wait."

In a skin test, the prick test for Type I hypersensitivity reactions—such as seafood, nut, or paint allergies—requires observing the results 20 to 30 minutes after the antigen is applied. The child was temporarily out of danger, and the next step of treatment would depend on the test results. For now, all they could do was...

Wait.

Looking left, looking right, sitting still, doing nothing.

Garet: "…"

Come on, we have to wait for half an hour, isn't anyone going to offer me some food?!