June of the 32nd year of Chengshun was a hot summer in the Chu Empire.
But in the southeastern part of Africa in the southern hemisphere, this time is actually winter, the coldest season of the year.
Meng Xiu led nearly a hundred people, driving multiple two-wheeled carriages, and everyone was walking in the wilderness of southern Africa carrying a 21-year-old percussion rifle.
After leaving the vicinity of Maputo, they entered a wilderness. The traffic situation in these places was very bad, and there were only some small dirt roads walked by indigenous people and caravans.
These dirt roads were bumpy and uneven, making it extremely difficult for carriages to walk, but even so, Meng Xiu and the others did not abandon these carriages.
Because these carriages carry a large amount of food, as well as tents needed to spend the night in the wild, some basic field tools and other wild survival supplies.
The supplies on these carriages ensured their survival in the African wilderness and could not be abandoned easily.
Otherwise, they would not be able to survive in the African wilderness for too long simply relying on the rations and supplies they carry with them.
The African wilderness these days is actually very unfriendly to humans, especially humans in the civilized world.
Various large animals can be seen everywhere, such as tigers, lions, cheetahs, etc., as well as various venomous snakes, mosquitoes, etc. that are everywhere and difficult to guard against.
If ordinary people do not have rich experience in surviving in the wild, and do not have sufficient protective equipment and supplies, they will not be able to survive long in this African wilderness.
Not to mention anything else, just drinking water is not an easy solution.
The wild water in these places is far from sweet... all kinds of parasites, microorganisms and other debris can kill people.
Although the drinking water for Meng Xiu and others was also wild water, it was boiled hot water. They had no guts to drink raw water in such a barbaric place, otherwise they would not know how to die.
Thanks to the domestic medical and health propaganda in recent years, the Ministry of Health, together with the Chaobao Department of the Ministry of Ethical Affairs and Education, has been continuously promoting the importance of drinking hot water for decades, so that people should not drink raw water.
In the early years, no one cared about it, but after years of publicity, people finally realized the necessity of drinking hot water.
Only in this way did people develop the habit of drinking hot water.
The cultivation of this habit is also a major achievement of the Ministry of Health.
Even though it is just a small thing like drinking hot water, if it is done well, it can increase the average life span of the people for many years...
Not to mention other things, parasite-related diseases alone have dropped significantly.
Coupled with extensive publicity, the public is guided to wash their hands before eating and after using the toilet, pay attention to environmental hygiene, etc.
The development of these good hygiene habits actually has an impact on the health of the people of the Chu Empire, and its effect is far greater than the so-called orthodox medical research and promotion!
Therefore, in the past thirty years, the average life span of the Great Chu Empire has increased from about thirty years to the current forty-five years (in 1900, Japan's average was forty-four, Europe's average was forty-six, and the United States' average was forty-eight).
What plays the most important role is not the improvement of medical technology, but the cultivation of good hygiene habits, and more importantly, the improvement of per capita food levels.
If you eat more, eat well and have good hygiene habits, you will naturally get less sick. If you don't get sick, the average life expectancy will naturally increase.
Of course, the progress of medical technology has brought about effects, but they are not as big as imagined...
Although Meng Xiu and the others have been hanging around overseas for a long time, they are still from the Chu country. Naturally, they have widely accepted a series of official guidance and propaganda from the empire. They didn't take it seriously at first, but after seeing others adopting some new hygiene habits, they naturally will also follow up.
People always have a herd mentality. When they see what others do and say, they will slowly be affected and become one of them.
Therefore, scientists in later generations said that when a person is alone, he will have his own personalized characteristics, have his own understanding of things, and maintain a basic level of IQ.
But when he integrates into the group, he will be quickly affected by the people around him, lose his individual characteristics, and his personal thoughts will be replaced by collective thoughts. The overall performance will be easy to be emotional, have low IQ, and have no objections, and then become a common phenomenon among people. That's what the crowd said.
Well, the word rabble, in this context, does not actually mean to belittle a certain group of people, but because it is the same for all of humanity.
After all, humans are collective creatures... As long as you are in society, it is impossible not to be affected by the people around you... Since you are affected, it also meets the standards of social psychology.
However, people always like to think that a certain group of people are a mob, and that they are individuals who are transcendent from the world... In fact, the reason why you have this idea is also influenced by others!
This is what is called the group effect in social psychology, and it is also the principle behind the brainwashing propaganda carried out by Germany during World War II.
Although Meng Xiu and the others are far away from the mainland and stay overseas all year round, they actually deal with the Chu people themselves on a daily basis. And these Chu people were not born overseas. They basically traveled from China to overseas territories to make a living. of.
These people were first affected at home, and then acquired some basic understandings of Chu people in China, such as drinking hot water and washing hands before eating.
After these people go overseas, these habits will still be maintained and affect others.
In the end, even if Meng Xiu and the others arrived in Africa, even far away from Maputo, where the Chu people gathered, and came to the interior of Africa, they still maintained many of the living habits of the Chu people and took them for granted.
Drinking hot water is probably the most typical feature.
Along the way, they relied on eating dry food, occasionally using firearms to hunt some animals for food, and drinking hot water as they crossed the desolate African continent.
However, the conditions were indeed too difficult. Three days after setting off, one person in Meng Xiu's team fell.
I don't know if it was due to unhygienic eating or some other reason, but the team member immediately started to have a fever.
Fortunately, the team carried enough emergency medicines, including two magic medicines for overseas immigrants: cinchona tree and willow bark.
Cinchona trees are used to treat malaria, the number one killer of immigrants overseas.
Willow bark is used to relieve pain and reduce fever. Although willow bark is a plant medicine, its medicinal effect is actually very similar to that of later generations of ibuprofen, but the side effects are greater.
But sometimes in order to relieve pain and reduce fever, the side effects are nothing. When you have a fever, you can control your body temperature with this device, so that the high fever will not subside and endanger your life.
This thing, to a certain extent, can be regarded as the Dachu Empire's version of ibuprofen... used for daily pain relief and life-saving for high fevers.
A member of the team who has some medical experience but definitely does not have a medical certificate concluded that this guy did not have malaria or a bad stomach. As for why he had a high fever... If you ask him, how would he know?
If he had known, he wouldn't have gone to the interior of Africa and risked his life carrying a torch!
With this ability, he could take a medical certificate in China and become a decent doctor!
No matter how bad you are, you can still work as an uncertified black man in an overseas colony. You can still make a lot of money and still have a high social status.
In the overseas colonies of the Great Chu Empire, doctors had a very high social status. Regardless of whether they were ordinary people or civil servants and generals, they would be polite when they saw a doctor, even if he was just an unlicensed black doctor, because in such poor places as overseas territories, The risk of getting sick is extremely high. If you get sick, you will always need to seek help from a doctor.
However, the number of doctors in overseas territories is very small. In the entire African governorate, there will never be more than ten certified legal doctors!
Basically, they are all sent from China to support the construction of African governorships. They leave after a few years and are rotated in batches. This is actually the main source of most legal doctors in overseas territories!
You let them immigrate on their own... They went to overseas colonies to find fault because their brains were burned out!
In the Great Chu Empire, the group of doctors, who had a very high social status, and the ordinary immigrants who went to overseas territories to seek life could be said to be two completely different social classes.
People don’t need to immigrate overseas, they can live a decent life at home.
Therefore, there are not many legal doctors in overseas territories i!
Many of them are shady doctors who do not have certificates and treat doctors under the pretense of recuperation and health care. These people often will not write prescriptions for you, because without a doctor's qualification certificate, once they write a prescription to a patient, it is illegal to practice medicine, and you must Fine and jail time...
However, it is not possible to write a prescription directly. You can dictate it...the patient writes it down himself. Even if he is illiterate, he can ask someone else to write it down.
Then go buy the medicine yourself.
At present, there are many traditional medicines in the Chu Empire, such as plant medicines or some mineral or animal medicines. Anyway, among the many chaotic empirical medicines, the current management is not strict. It only bans some highly toxic and dangerous goods, which have obvious strong side effects. Drug.
Generally speaking, as long as something is too weird, you can basically sell it as you like. After all, you can ban many things, but people can just dig up some plant medicines in the wild...
Furthermore, at present, the Da Chu Empire’s drug research capabilities are still very limited. It is difficult to figure out whether some drugs in traditional empirical medicine are useful and what side effects they have... Since they will not be able to figure it out for a while, the Da Chu Empire simply I don’t understand some of it, but I also put aside the traditional empirical medicine that can’t kill people, and manage it with health supplements for the time being.
After all, many botanical medicines are made from the bark of flowers, plants, and trees. If people insist on eating the bark of flowers, plants, and trees, you have to let people eat it... As long as it doesn't kill people, then so be it.
But the same cannot be said for dangerous items, such as arsenic, opium, etc. These items are directly classified as contraband and are not allowed to be bought and sold by individuals.
Overall, the current medical treatment in the Great Chu Empire relies heavily on traditional empirical medicine. However, due to limited medical technology, it is temporarily unclear about the principles and drug interactions of traditional empirical medicine... so it is difficult. Do it.
So in the end, there was such a nondescript management method, which included some dangerous goods as contraband for management. However, ordinary people have not found any major side effects after eating them. At the same time, I don’t know why this thing is useful. , I don’t even know if there are traditional empirical medicines that are useful, but they are included in the management of health products.
At the same time, some drugs with clear effects and side effects that have passed clinical trials, such as newly developed chemical agents, and effective costs extracted from traditional medicine such as salicylic acid, are included in drug management. And it is widely used in major medical institutions... However, there are not many drugs included in the drug management, so that the current Drug Safety Management Office is actually under the Food Safety Department.
The dilemma of drug management also reflects the current limited level of modern medical technology in the Chu Empire.
At the same time, the learning cost of doctors is too high, so there are not many of them.
After all, seeking medical treatment is not easy. You have to go to medical school, not to mention medical school in a university, but at least you have to go to a medical school in a technical secondary school, otherwise you won’t even be qualified to apply for a medical certificate.
To study, you must at least go to a technical secondary school, which is actually very difficult for most immigrants at the bottom of society... If this family could afford their children to go to school, they would not have to immigrate overseas. ah.
There are not many doctors among immigrants, even uncertified doctors. This has also led to many people in overseas territories. After getting sick, many people take it upon themselves to fight. When they have a fever, they drink some willow bark soup. , if you have diarrhea, have a meal of cinchona tree tea!
See a doctor?
Large colonial cities are okay, but some small towns, ordinary immigrant settlements, with a woolen doctor...
Maputo can be considered a large colonial town. There is not even a legal ruling doctor in the city, and there is also a half-baked, uncertified black doctor who can only treat some common diseases and ordinary trauma, and the fees are not cheap.
It is already rare for Meng Xiu and his team to have a talent with some medical experience.
It's impossible to want more.
Therefore, facing Meng Xiu and the others, who had a high fever but couldn't figure out why, they had no choice but to put the team member with a high fever on the carriage and then cook willow bark soup for him to reduce the fever.
At the same time, Meng Xiu once again emphasized to the team members that they must maintain good food hygiene.
If you want to go back alive, you must drink hot water that has been boiled for a while. When eating, try to eat the food you bring with you. Meats from hunting must be steamed at high temperatures and can only be eaten after they are cooked thoroughly. And only some common foods can be eaten. Animals cannot eat the meat of random animals.
At the same time, pay attention to guarding against venomous snakes and mosquitoes. Don't take off your shoes and leggings casually, and don't lift your shirt easily. Don't take off your gloves and touch some plants or even the mud to avoid being bitten by venomous snakes and mosquitoes.
You must sleep in a tent at night, and the tent must be set up to prevent venomous snakes and mosquitoes from getting in.
In short, those who don't want to die should honestly follow the strict survival rules in the wilderness, otherwise no one will be able to save them if something happens in the wilderness.
As we continued to move forward so cautiously, two more people fell in the following days.
One of them was very unlucky. When he was riding a horse to clear the road ahead, he encountered a venomous snake... and then the horse was frightened by the big python and ran wildly.
As a result, this unlucky guy was thrown off his horse, his right wrist was directly fractured, and his right leg was also sprained... There was no other way but to endure the pain and perform a simple bandage.
There was another one who was even more unlucky and was stung to death by a wasp!
This man got on the tuba directly on the roadside when he was taking a short rest during the march. However, he was careless and didn't observe carefully, so he got on the tuba directly under a hornet's nest, and the movement made him startle the hornet's nest above his head...
As a result, those hornets' nests unceremoniously stung him all over his head... Ouch, ouch, he died directly after a few hours!
Only a few days after setting off, one person died, one became sick and one was injured, resulting in three casualties attributable to non-combat operations. This made Meng Xiu very helpless.
But there is nothing we can do about it. Africa is so dangerous these days.
This is why the Chu Empire was unwilling to let its regular army fight deep into the interior of Africa. Instead, it mobilized a large number of Indian legions to serve as the main field combat force.
This place is too dangerous, and non-combat attrition is too harsh.
