Olan Thorensen - Cast Under an Alien Sun

“Again, how do you know what he told you is true?”

“Because he described how the appendix should be cut out by surgery and what precautions to take. I wonder now at myself, but somehow—how I don’t know—I believed everything he told me. It just sounded so right . So logical. So explanatory of many things we don’t understand.” She paused. “So I authorized the surgery he recommended.”

“Diera!” exclaimed a shocked Sistian. “Based only on Yozef’s statements, you performed surgery and cut out a patient’s . . . appendix?”

“Yes. I spoke with Yozef at mid-morning, and we performed the surgery before midday. The patient woke about an hour after the surgery, and he was in less pain than before, even after being cut open, his appendix removed, and being sewn back closed. Before I left the hospital, he asked for food, talked to his family, and wondered how soon he could return home.”

Diera looked at her husband. “Sistian, under normal circumstances it would be as if a miracle from God had happened. At least half of the people with this condition die, and the rest undergo agonizing pain and fever for sometimes weeks. This man wants to go home tomorrow!”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Sistian, Yozef dropped this on me with no idea of its importance. It was just a trivial piece of information that was common knowledge with his people. Yet it was unknown to us here on Caedellium, and nothing like anything I’d heard when I was studying in Landolin. Granted, we still need to see if there are any side effects and if any corruption—or infection, as Yozef says—occurs. However, barring those, the patient will be considered cured within days. I then think of all of the patients with this same condition that we . . . I . . . lost over the years because of our ignorance.”

“Diera, if all of this is true, I shouldn’t have to remind you of all of the patients you’ll save in the future.”

“I realize that, dear. I honestly do. And I thank God for the knowledge Yozef shares with us. But there’s more. Yozef gave an explanation of why patients get worse and often die of this condition.”

Diera went on to describe the concept of microscopic creatures that cause both infections and disease.

“Well, this is more your field than mine, and maybe some of the scholastics’, but I don’t recall ever hearing about such tiny creatures.”

“That’s because no one has.”

“Then how do you know they exist?”

“I don’t know , but I’m convinced. You’ve talked with Yozef. You’re as good a judge of people as anyone I know, and, frankly, I think I’m not too bad at it either. If anything, he seems naïve but honest. When you talk to him, and he drops these morsels of knowledge on us, it always seems without ulterior motive. It just seems right when you have time to think about it. And these ‘microorganisms,’ as he calls them. First, I’ve been sitting here thinking about it the last hour or so. It would explain so much. And in addition, he doesn’t just state their existence, he says how we can fashion a reverse telescope to see them.”

“A reverse telescope?”

“Yes. Instead of making things distant, you can make them appear closer. Yozef says by using different-shaped lenses, we can make small things appear larger. He’s going to talk to his workmen and set them the task of making what he calls microscopes .”

Diera sighed. “I also have the intuition Yozef knows much more than he’s said so far, and although I need to continue talking with him, I already suspect our practice of medicine is in the process of nothing short of an epic change. Thus, all my emotions. Confusion. Wondering what obvious procedures we’ve missed and why we have thought our medical knowledge was so advanced. Wonder at what I saw today. Caution that I shouldn’t expect too much too soon, since only time confirms how well this new knowledge is put into effect. Surprise that this has hit me so hard. Hope for more knowledge we can help people with. Excitement at what may come. And—fear.”

“Fear?”

Diera nodded. “Fear my hopes are too high at the moment. Fear the patient may still die. Fear the appendix we removed is a necessary part of the body or mind, in spite of what Yozef says. Fear there may come such momentous changes that many, including even some of the medicants and the scholastics at St. Sidryn’s, will resist and condemn. Fear of exactly who and what is Yozef? The ether, and now this today? What more may come? We want to attribute such things to the grace of God, but could it be a clever ploy of the Evil One? Is this simply a case of Caedellium being so remote from the rest of Anyar that we are backward, or could it be Yozef is an agent of God? If so, to what purpose? Why now?”

Sistian had no answers, nor did he think his wife was asking for them. She was recounting questions without answers. Questions that Sistian also would consider, along with many more in the days, months, and years to come.

In the following sixdays, Diera spoke with Yozef almost daily, probing for pieces of information. Yozef willingly offered suggestions, though often had no clues about practical matters, to Diera’s awkward gratification that the implementation was still dependent on her and the other medicants. Assuming the knowledge he claimed was accurate, an initially prodigious qualification neutralized the more they talked, Diera’s understanding of the functioning of the human body multiplied several-fold. So quickly did her confidence grow that she abandoned her initial reticence to bring in other medicants until she had more evidence about the accuracy of what Yozef was telling her. There was simply too much to think about. She knew she was risking resistance among the older medicants, so the first three she brought in to help were the two younger surgeons, Saoul Dyllis and Arnik Bolwyn, and Wilwin Wallington, the scholastic of the animals and the plants of Caedellium. She felt these three were among the more mentally flexible of the brothers and the sisters. Dyllis was skeptical at first but served as a good counterweight to Diera’s and Bolywin’s rising enthusiasm. It was brother Wallington who surprised her. While he was diligent in his common duties around the abbey complex, and no one doubted his commitment to his chosen specialty, he was never considered one of the abbey’s more illustrious staff members.

Brother Wallington became Yozef’s adoring slave, once he was convinced by the first microscopes of the existence of a whole new realm of creatures previously unknown. He was endlessly enthralled by the multifaceted protozoans, while the two medicants were interested in bacteria. Wallington’s total acceptance of the concept of invisible-to-the-naked-eye creatures helped convince the other staff at the abbey.

During the following months, Yozef’s discussions with Diera introduced an array of new ideas, some of which were adopted immediately, some slated perhaps to the future, and others proved impractical, either technically or because there was no scaffold of current Caedellium knowledge and custom to hang them on. Among those immediately workable, or with some reasonable development, were stethoscopes, Ringers solution, plasma for blood loss and shock, hypodermics, the possibility of blood transfusions (though only considering AB factors, not +/-, so only in emergencies), and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The last innovation met with significant trepidation, because it was viewed by many common people and even some medicants as reviving the dead, a power appropriate only for God—or possibly the Evil One, to create his demonic agents.

Once Yozef convinced Diera of the possibility of microorganisms as a cause of corruption, the St. Sidryn's medicants began using Yozef’s suggestions about the surgical environment. He also suggested stronger acidic solutions once he remembered that an early antiseptic was carbolic acid, phenol by chemical composition. No Anyar versions of phenol were identifiable, and the easiest source Yozef could remember was the distillation of phenol from coal tar, a process not immediately possible. As substitutes, he suggested acetic acid (vinegar) and boric acid made from the mineral borax, available locally. In neither case could Yozef give advice on concentration, other than low, but Diera didn’t seem concerned about figuring out optimal concentrations.