I Became a Plague Doctor in a Romance Fantasy Novel

Episode 58. Soldiers in the Blood (3)

Episode 58. Soldiers in the Blood (3)

The white blood cell-related papers, I’m gonna push them out as fast as I can, along with the scurvy paper.

But papers, no matter how fast you write them, there’s the review process, the whole procedure.

Presenting them in class or at conferences, that’s the best way to go. It’s obvious, but still.

I cleared my throat a little in front of the podium.

“Before I begin this lecture. Is there anyone here who doesn’t know what centripetal force is?”

Starting with Hedwig, it seemed like a huge chunk of the people who attended the conference yesterday about me were in this class. Well…

Could happen.

I figured that would be the case.

“Centripetal force is the force that acts outwards when an object is rotating.”

Only looks of “what the hell are you talking about” came back at me. Do they really not know what centripetal force is? I scratched my head, then drew a circle on the board again. Let’s explain from centripetal force, then.

“Look. If an object is rotating, it’s going to spin like this. Since the object is tied to a string and spinning, if you let go of the string, it’s obviously going to fly along the tangent of the circle.”

The people listening to the lecture still didn’t seem convinced. Violet, sitting in the front row, raised her hand.

“Yes, Violet.”

“Did you change careers to become a math professor?”

I shook my head.

“No, look, I’m saying that when an object rotates, it receives force outwards? In an ordinary 10-centimeter rotor, if the revolutions per minute are between 1,000 and 2,000, the force the object receives becomes 300 times that of gravity.”

Violet raised her hand again.

“Are you changing careers to be a professor of magic?”

Are they trying to be funny here?

I pressed my palm to my forehead.

“No, listen, please. If you expose blood to 300 times the force of gravity for a few minutes, it’ll settle and separate into layers.”

The lecture hall buzzed, same as always.

“Professor, I don’t understand a word. We haven’t studied magic.”

That was Oliver.

The lecture hall mostly agreed with Oliver’s remark. The general vibe was, why come to a medical lecture and spout nonsense?

“Rotational motion is when an object can’t move freely, but rotates around a point. You have to hold it to restrict its trajectory, and the reaction force against that holding force is what we call centripetal force.”

“So?”

“Using this principle, we created something called a centrifuge. We can use centripetal force to separate solutions by density.”

I scanned the room. Amy was dozing, Oliver was frowning, and the other graduate students and professors had similar reactions.

This is frustrating.

Let’s move on. Centripetal force isn’t even the point.

“Haah… By some means, we separated blood into its components. Okay?”

Everyone nodded at that.

“Anyway. What I’m showing you today is this. I separated it right before class, and you can see how the yellow liquid, which is the plasma, and the red liquid, which is the red blood cells, are separated into layers, right?”

Oliver raised his hand again.

“But what does that have to do with 300 times the force of gravity?”

“No, I’m saying I separated the blood into its components by exposing the vial to 300 times the force of gravity.”

“So, you separated the blood by putting a 300-times-gravity spell on the vial?”

You moron. Utter nonsense…

Okay, fine, let’s say that’s true.

“Let’s just say it’s true.”

“How did you manage 300 times the gravity?”

“There’s a device for that.”

I sighed.

Let’s not explain it. I’ll just vaguely write it in the paper, they can understand it or not.

It’s not like there’s no way to make a 1000 rpm rotor, anyway. With a little exaggeration, you could even do it manually.

“Please, let’s move on. Anyway, I told you blood is made of cells, right? There are special ones among the cells in blood.”

The most numerous of the blood cells, the ones these people have seen so far, would obviously be red blood cells.

Red blood cells are cells without nuclei. They’re simple structures, compared to the white blood cells that wage war.

“I call these white blood cells. Under a microscope they’re white and lighter than red blood cells, so when you centrifuge them, they form a layer on top of the red blood cells. If you transfer this under a microscope…”

A dropper went into the vial, and a single white drop fell onto the slide.

“You can observe them moving under a microscope. The important thing is this. What is the role of these white blood cells, that’s the key, what do you think their role is?”

Of course, no one answered. I erased the centripetal force diagram from the blackboard and drew an ordinary neutrophil shape.

A jellyfish or slime-like form.

“I’ve said it many times, structure and function. Most white blood cells look like this. What function can we infer from the structure of a white blood cell?”

I pointed at Amy.

“Amy! Answer.”

“Uh, it looks kind of like slime.”

“Right. What does slime do?”

Amy hesitated a good while before speaking.

“Slime? Uh, they freely change shape and eat other things, right…?”

I tapped the white blood cell drawing on the blackboard. Amy was racking her brain.

Freely changes shape and eats other things, that’s what white blood cells do too.

“White blood cells also eat something – Ah! You’re trying to say that white blood cells use a similar principle to slime to eat bacteria, is that it?”

“Well done, Amy.”

Looks like she figured it out.

She said exactly what I was trying to get at.

“White blood cells eat bacteria. Bacteria cause disease, and that’s connected to the specific mechanisms of how the body responds to bacteria, right?”

Now, one of the professors is going to ask for proof. Three, two, one…

“Is there evidence for that?”

Predictable, what they always do.

“Evidence? If we’re lucky, we could see a white blood cell eating bacteria, or some other foreign object. The white blood cells in this microscope are still alive, after all.”

Observable evidence.

It’ll be a bit hard to actually see a white blood cell eating bacteria, but if we try enough times, there’s no reason we shouldn’t find it.

“To put it simply. The reason infection happens is because of a war between the bacteria that entered the body and the human white blood cells circulating in the blood. As a byproduct of that, pus forms, fevers rise, and redness or rashes appear.”

The number of white blood cells increases in infected patients.

I don’t know if we can measure the number of white blood cells with the equipment we have available in this world, but isn’t it worth trying?

“Seems like your evidence is lacking.”

How many times are they gonna say that, seriously?

“Actually, doesn’t pus form around infected wounds? Pus has a different composition than blood or surrounding tissue. That’s because white blood cells rush there to fight the infection.”

The lecture hall started to buzz so loudly that the lecture was impossible to continue. There’s evidence, it’s an overly anthropomorphized analogy, and so on.

“Professor. Can we see the white blood cells?”

“Uh, yeah. Come out and line up.”

The rustling of people getting up from their seats. The area in front of the podium became instantly crowded.

White blood cells are dying even now, so whoever wants to see them should hurry.

The lecture was suspended, and today too, people were lined up at the microscope next to the podium.

It was a familiar sight.

Taking advantage of the commotion, Violet walked to the front of the podium. A look of curiosity on her face.

“Professor.”

“Yes.”

“So, what was that centripetal force thing you were talking about at first? I felt like I was almost getting it.”

“I’m saying that I spin vials containing blood. If you spin them fast, the blood separates.”

“Just spin it fast? That’s amazing… How did you know that, Professor?”

“I explained it for a while. Centripetal force and all that.”

“Hmm.”

Violet didn’t seem convinced.

“Professor. I wondered where I’d heard this. Aren’t these the same things Istina said at the conference yesterday and got laughed at for?”

I don’t know what Istina said at the conference, but I know it was a similar argument.

That talk about white blood cells being something like the body’s soldiers fighting against germs had been met with ridicule. Even though it was true.

“Perhaps that’s so.”

“You’re quick to respond.”

“It’s something I’ve been pondering for a long time.”

“So you mean Ms. Istina is right about everything? White blood cells are real, and the essence of infection is a war between white blood cells and germs inside the body.”

“That’s what I believe.”

Of course, the immune process within the body is more complex than anyone can imagine. The discussion can’t just end at the level of macrophages eating germs.

Still, I think it’s a decent start.

“Well, this time too, the academic world is up in arms because of you, Professor. The neat and tidy four humors theory is shattered, and it seems many scholars don’t like the idea of the human body being a messy collection of minute machines, with cells, blood circulation, and blood corpuscles.”

“But what else can it be, if that’s the reality?”

It wasn’t like I could go around lying. I just nodded.

Violet seemed quite pleased.

“This time the academic world will flip again. Isn’t this the Holy Grail they’ve been searching for? We found the specific mechanism of how the body fights against disease.”

Isn’t the Holy Grail a bit of an exaggeration?