WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint ◈
Chapter 103: Faith Reassembled (3)
──────
The Imperial Capital.
The front line, which had retreated slightly after the tragedy of the mutated magical beasts a year ago, had stabilized, and the Empire settled into its usual gloomy peace.
Beneath the smog that blocked out the sunlight,
the poor quietly fell ill in the darkness, while ordinary people squeezed out their lifeblood to keep from falling.
And the nobles enjoyed their rightful privileges amid that peace.
It was dark, but it was the stable peace that had endured for centuries.
Unlike the commoners and nobles, however, the healing world was in an uproar over one person.
It began that summer.
The Black Saint, Director Schun.
The healer without divine power, who hid both face and race beneath a crow mask, had published a book that turned the healing world upside down.
================
<A General Treatise on Parasites>
- Authors: Elia & Arian Schnabel, Simeon Ronald
- Translated by: Dr. Schnabel
================
Parasites, and the Schnabel couple.
When those names resurfaced in academic circles, the first to react were the capital's elderly healers.
“The Schnabel couple?”
“Why would the Black Saint take an interest in people like them...?”
“Why revive a theory conclusively proven wrong fifteen years ago?”
About thirty years earlier,
the Schnabel couple had swept through the healing world like a storm.
Parasites might be the cause of demon disease.
They discovered that divine power actually accelerated the growth of parasites and announced that this was the cause of demon disease.
Looking at the patients the couple introduced, the theory seemed plausible.
They administered poisonous herbs, including water hemlock, and heavy metals, briefly rendered patients unconscious, then revived them with high-grade Heal. Demon disease patients recovered.
Healers immediately began using the couple's treatment on demon disease patients.
And while the couple were alive, healers began to hope they had found a way to overcome demon disease.
But immediately after the couple disappeared on the southern front,
parasitology rapidly declined.
“The side effects of parasite treatment are too severe. It seems the medicines are killing the patients instead.”
“Something must be wrong with the medicine.”
It began when patient after patient treated according to the couple's methods never woke up again.
Healers hoping to inherit the couple's reputation all tried the treatment.
But all they got in return were countless patients left in vegetative states.
The healers whose treatments failed began to doubt the couple.
“Were the poisonous herbs merely a smokescreen to hide the real medicine?”
“Other healing institutions do the same. When they train jointly with other institutions, they add useless decoys to the catalysts they use.”
“That makes sense. Then if we remove the poisonous herbs and heavy metals... What? It has no effect?”
Each of the twelve healing institutions had secret arcane spell formulas and catalysts of its own.
So whenever they treated patients in front of other healers, they would deliberately add unnecessary stones or metals to confuse them.
The healers suspected the couple had done the same.
But every time they removed something that appeared unnecessary, the treatment failed.
Then an incident occurred.
“Parasites are not the cause of demon disease!”
“We tried parasite treatment on hundreds of demon disease patients, but most attempts failed!”
Healers seized any demon disease patient they could find and subjected them to parasite treatment.
Countless failures were reported as a result.
Furthermore, healers who failed to treat nobles vanished beneath the executioner's blade.
Unable to bear it any longer, the Mensia Sect, where the Schnabel couple had studied healing, announced the following.
“Not all demon disease is caused by parasites, and the couple's treatment is also entirely wrong. Therefore, our sect declares that the parasite theory itself is mistaken and that parasites are not the cause of illness.”
The healing world reversed its position.
Parasites were not the cause of disease. Like maggots gathering on rot, they appeared in people weakened by demon disease.
Parasites were reduced from something to be treated to a finding that might occasionally appear when diagnosing demon disease.
And the couple's reputation as the first to cure demon disease was also revoked.
Once again, the history of humanity curing demon disease had vanished.
That had happened fifteen years ago.
No one expected the couple's names to be discussed in academic circles again.
Yet that summer,
Director Schun engraved their names on the cover of a general treatise and brought it to the academic society.
“Are we supposed to accept that as it is?”
“Why not read it first?”
“The couple's treatment was not mistaken? Then what happened to those patients?”
Though doubtful, the academic world trusted the Black Saint's reputation and began reading.
As they turned the pages, the elderly healers found themselves accepting the theory.
“You do not administer everything in a single day, but treat the patient gradually over several weeks? Such a method...!”
“It is the dose that distinguishes poison from medicine... Hah. How did they arrive at such an insight?”
“Were we mistaken? Not all demon disease was caused by parasites, only some of it?”
“The couple made mistakes too. These are not parasites. Still, that does not mean they were entirely wrong... This is embarrassing.”
Director Schun did not simply claim that the couple had been right.
They had certainly been wrong in some respects.
Even so, their methods had not been completely wrong.
Above all, he described in detail what the couple had overlooked: how to distinguish parasitic demon disease from other forms of demon disease.
[The Schnabel couple mistook every case of demon disease involving abdominal pain for a parasitic illness. But parasites were only one part of demon disease, not the whole of it.
Therefore, this translator will describe physical examination methods for accurately identifying parasitic infections.]
Symptoms varied depending on where the parasites were located.
When parasites entered the brain, the head hurt. When they entered the abdomen, the stomach hurt.
Based on that fact, the Schnabel couple and the healing world had mistaken the many varied symptoms of demon disease as all being caused by parasites.
Director Schun corrected that misunderstanding.
[Symptoms of anemia are often seen in hookworm, whipworm, schistosomiasis, and malaria.]
[If there is a moving red, line-shaped rash beneath the skin, suspect cutaneous larvae.]
[If the legs are swollen, suspect lymphatic filariasis.]
[If you look closely inside the eyes, you may find wriggling eye worms.]
[However, if these parasites cannot be directly identified, or if the symptoms do not match the parasite's location, there is a high chance that it is not caused by parasites.]
He argued that demon disease was a condition made up of several different illnesses.
Parasites were only one part of it.
And the couple had not been wrong.
Their work had merely been incomplete.
The academic world had no choice but to acknowledge it.
The couple had not been entirely wrong.
After decades, the Schnabel couple's names came back to life in academic circles.
Their demon disease treatment was moved from a cautionary example to an official treatment case.
Voices also began to call for their parasitology to be recognized as a field of study.
And around the time the academic world accepted this,
Director Schun circulated another paper.
======================================
“On Things Smaller Than Parasites: A Hypothesis”
- There may be living things smaller than parasites.
- Until now, we have accepted humoral theory, the imbalance of bodily fluids, as established doctrine, while partially accepting miasma, or bad air.
- But perhaps both humoral theory and miasma theory, the foundations of current academia, may be wrong.
======================================
In autumn, as maple leaves fell,
the healing world was thrown into uproar once more.
* * *
After Director Schun's theory was announced,
the academic world's response split into three groups.
First, those endlessly favorable toward Director Schun accepted the theory immediately.
“There is no evidence yet? Hah. Just believe it. Whatever that person says has to be right.”
“They'll probably create another new medicine based on this... Should I buy Merkuer shares now?”
“What kind of medicine are they laying the groundwork to make this time?”
It was still only a hypothesis.
Yet some already believed it to be correct.
But not every healer reacted so favorably.
“We cannot accept it without evidence.”
“People's lives are at stake here. How can we accept it without evidence?”
“When we use divine magic according to humoral theory, as many as half survive. Why take such a dangerous risk?”
“It is too radical a theory.”
Even Director Schun had yet to present evidence.
There were healers who urged caution.
Most healers fell closer to this group.
Then there was the final group.
“Director Schun is about due for a fall.”
“That fellow is too radical.”
“I cannot understand why people still fall for that fraud.”
They were healers who simply disliked him.
They were a very small group, but their voices were louder than anyone else's.
As healers divided into three groups,
Director Schun made a proposal that immediately shattered the stalemate.
“I would like to arrange an occasion to formally explain the evidence for my hypothesis before senior members of every sect in the academic world.”
“I welcome both objections and verification.”
“The date will be October, and the venue will be the lecture hall of the Imperial Capital Healing Institute's main building.”
Put another way:
[It's me. Come at me.]
Whether he intended it or not,
the provocation was highly effective.
Countless healers boarded airships and gathered in the capital to test his theory.
And there were those who did not welcome this atmosphere.
“Tomorrow is the day of the presentation.”
The evening before Schnabel's symposium.
In a small lounge prepared for the Mensia Sect in the eastern corridor of the Capital Healing Institute,
three priests drank tea beneath dim magic lamps.
The man seated in the place of honor was Dormun Mensia.
He was the archbishop of the Mensia Sect and a high-grade healer who ranked third within the sect.
“The ghost of the Schnabel couple is raising its head again.”
Archbishop Dormun let out a deep sigh.
“As if blinding young healers with that mistaken parasite theory were not enough, they have now gone so far as to deny humoral theory.”
“I am ashamed, Archbishop.”
“It is not your fault, brothers.”
The archbishop lightly waved a hand.
“It is the fault of us old people, whose hearts were too soft to declare that couple heretics.”
Ansen, the middle-aged priest on the right, sighed faintly.
“When I think back, Archbishop, I can still see the day that couple first entered our healing institution. They both completed the lower healer course in our sect... Then one day, they suddenly left our sect and the institution and began taking an interest in parasites.”
“They were my classmates as well. I should have stopped them somehow back then.”
The middle-aged priest on the left, Lathaniel, adjusted their glasses lightly in self-reproach.
“They were ungrateful people. They should not have forgotten where their learning began. They forgot they had grown from Mensia soil and presented it as though it were entirely their own accomplishment.”
Of course, the couple had received no aid from the Mensia Sect while conducting their research on parasites.
But the foundational knowledge underlying their research was certainly Mensia Sect knowledge.
Those who had once belonged to a sect should not forget its kindness.
To claim all the credit for themselves felt unforgivable to them.
“And it is also unforgivable that they took someone from the Ronald Sect as their disciple.”
They might have understood if the couple had only accepted members of the Mensia Sect as successors.
But the couple placed no restrictions on those they accepted as disciples.
People from countless sects applied to become disciples, and the one who remained at their side until the end was Simeon Ronald.
“I never dreamed that they would choose someone from the Ronald Sect.”
“Brother Lathaniel. That was not your fault. It happened because that couple and Simeon Ronald were blinded by greed.”
Sip.
Bishop Ansen took a sip of tea, then made the sign of the cross as if suppressing their anger.
“Even when that couple betrayed our brothers, Archbishop, you always waited for them to return. But what returned to us?”
“...”
“Even in death, rather than returning their research to our sect, the couple instructed their disciple to make it public.”
It was infuriating from the Mensia Sect's perspective.
Did not all that research on parasites have its roots in the Mensia Sect?
Then even if they wandered outside while alive, it was only proper that they return that knowledge to the Mensia Sect after death.
Just as nobles passed down arcane magic to their children through the generations to preserve great houses,
healers, in place of a family, had the “duty” to return all research records to the sect that taught them when they died.
It was a long tradition of the healing world that had endured for centuries.
But the couple broke that duty and entrusted the fate of their research to a disciple of the Ronald Sect.
“The couple truly had poor judgment. That fellow Simeon, those research records are clearly ours, yet they use them alone and refuse to share them with other healers, as though they had some right to them.”
“And they were hardly skilled, either.”
As Father Lathaniel and Bishop Ansen went back and forth, Archbishop Dormun interjected.
“You need not blame yourselves so much, brothers. Is that not why the gods recognized the couple's character in advance?”
Dormun slowly brought two fingers together and made a brief sign of the cross.
“The eyes of the flock are sometimes clouded. But how could the gods' eyes be clouded?”
“...”
“Did not the gods recognize first the character of those two, who severed their bond with fellow priests, tested their learning on their brothers' patients, handed their entire body of learning to a priest from a hostile sect, and even at the moment of death returned not one line to their sect? Did the gods not pass a fitting judgment upon them?”
Dormun closed his eyes briefly.
“Therefore, from our old perspective, the fact that the learning produced by those two was ultimately judged mistaken was no coincidence.”
That was why the Mensia Sect had taken the lead in exposing the couple's errors.
Wrong knowledge had spread because they had failed to manage it properly, so they had tried to correct that knowledge with greater responsibility than anyone.
They warned of the side effects of parasite medicines, declared that the couple had spread an incorrect treatment to monopolize their methods, and announced that parasites were not the cause of demon disease.
As the third-ranking member of the sect, Dormun felt a sense of responsibility as he erased traces of the couple's mistakes.
“It took a very long time.”
“Yet despite your efforts, Archbishop, that Black Saint has revived their learning.”
“That is why I am concerned.”
The archbishop sighed.
“It means that even a saint is only human. Their eyes may be clouded, but to be blinded by people such as them... I can only conclude that the couple's sins run deep.”
“Then what do you intend to do about these bacteria?”
“Tomorrow, I must help the saint see clearly again.”
Sip.
The archbishop slowly set down his teacup.
“A theory that begins from mistaken roots can only be mistaken. These so-called bacteria are probably magical power particles seen incorrectly.”
“I think the same. Shall we inform the other sects of our position?”
“Please do, Brother Ansen. In particular, we have frequent dealings with the brothers of the Adamberta Sect and the Lafabri Sect, so please make sure they do not form the wrong impression.”
“Understood, Archbishop. As it happens, Archbishop Erven will also attend tomorrow's debate.”
“That is fortunate.”
Erven Adamberta.
An authority on bloodletting therapy in the Adamberta Sect.
His bloodletting had reached the point where he could treat patients by removing only the poison flowing through their blood.
Even nobles attacked by basilisks showed a survival rate of fifty percent after passing through his hands. The other fifty percent died of excessive blood loss, but that was considered an acceptable number.
And humoral theory lay at the foundation of this bloodletting.
“If it is the elder, he will surely identify the contradictions in bacteria with precision.”
Father Lathaniel smiled brightly.
That was only natural. Erven was the living history of humoral theory.
With elven blood flowing through him, he had saved countless people with that theory over three hundred years.
He would recognize at once just how mistaken bacterial theory was.
“The other elders will also understand how absurd this talk of bacteria is.”
The three brought two fingers together at once and made a brief sign of the cross.
The dim light of the magic lamps fell over their fingertips in the same pattern before fading away.
The night of the priests, who sincerely believed in their own devotion, deepened in prayer.
The next day arrived.
Awaiting the Black Saint's presentation, countless priests entered the lecture hall with documents of anticipated questions in hand.
An authority on bloodletting.
An authority on limb amputation.
An authority on mercury treatment.
As Dormun watched numerous elder healers enter the lecture hall, he prayed for the saint's soul.
‘No matter how great the saint may be, persuading all these elders will be impossible.’
But what could be done?
Everyone failed sometimes in life.
Dormun only hoped that after learning from this failure, the saint would open their eyes again and continue striving.
‘After this presentation is over, perhaps I should consider asking them to transfer the rights to parasitology to our sect.’
Dormun waited for the saint to appear with that thought in mind.
Then the curtains of the lecture hall rose, revealing the stage.
Dormun immediately sensed that something was wrong.
[Elders.]
On the many desks,
dozens of microscopes had been placed.
Considering that a single microscope made by a master craftsman cost several million mar, the lecture hall contained microscopes worth as much as several houses.
Director Schun pointed to the microscopes and began the presentation.
[It will be faster for you to see them yourselves than for me to explain. These are bacteria I have cultured and stained over the last few months. If anything makes you curious during my explanation, please come forward and examine them yourselves.]
For some reason, it felt as though the saint was eagerly watching the elders through the lenses of the crow mask.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
