Chapter 304 Solving the Problem (IX)
A ship had to be equipped with dozens of cannons and the hull had to have more than three decks. Feng Yukuan returned to Linzi from Songjiang Prefecture and told Huo Chong about this as a joke. Unexpectedly, Huo Chong did not laugh at all, but nodded, revealing an expression of "it should be like this".
Feng Yukuan was afraid that he had seen it wrong, so he quickly asked, "Brother Huo, don't really believe that Spaniard."
"How could I believe the Spaniards?" Huo Chong responded, but thought to himself, I just know that this statement is correct.
Feng Yukuan felt relieved. "Brother Huo, I see you want to build a big ship so much. I'm afraid you will believe these Spaniards."
"Big ships must be built. If we want to travel tens of thousands of miles on the sea, we must use big ships. But we don't need to rush to get everything done at once. Those iron-framed and wooden-hulled ships should be designed as large as possible every time."
Feng Yukuan felt that this was not good, so he could only ask tentatively: "How far do you want to run, Brother Huo?"
Huo Chong smiled and said, "Brother Feng, look, the Spaniards traveled thousands of miles to get here. Why can't we go to the Spaniards' hometown to take a look? Could it be that Brother Feng is old, so he has lost this spirit?"
When Feng Yukuan heard Huo Chong talking about "old age", he immediately rebelled and said loudly: "Even if I am old, I am not a loser. What's wrong with going to the Spanish country to have a look?"
After saying this, Feng Yukuan, who was almost sixty years old, thought about the ship that had been bumping along the way to Japan and gradually became smaller. It was a pipe dream for such a ship to travel tens of thousands of miles. He said with some dismay, "I... am really old. Brother Huo is right. We have to build a big ship. If the ship is too small, it really can't travel that far."
Huo Chong felt that it was a victory that the oldest person at sea in the Chinese court agreed with the idea of building large ships.
However, this cannot be rushed. Huo Chong is more concerned about the Spanish's keenness in this trade. Even after receiving Huo Chong's news, the Spaniards have already produced so many goods for trade. Many of them must have been prepared before Huo Chong conquered Songjiang.
After careful consideration, Huo Chong came to the conclusion that the fact that he had opened a port in Shandong had already been known to the upper echelons in Spain.
Now that Spanish merchants have learned of this, it is unclear how long it will take for the news to spread elsewhere.
The next day after Huo Chong figured out the matter, the lighthouse lookouts at Jimo Port in Shandong found that some ships were heading towards the port. Through the telescope, they saw that these ships were flying the Union Jack.
The observer saw that the flag was printed very carefully, so it should be a real flag, not just a random drawing. He flipped through the flag pattern in the manual and quickly found the Union Jack.
By the time Huo Chong got the news, the port of Jimo had already sent pilots to bring the British ship into the port. The British obviously didn't expect to encounter customs, and immediately asked the Chinese court to provide customs management instructions. After reading this rather simple customs regulation, the British took out a list of goods entering the customs.
After receiving the list, the customs officers of the Chinese court were confused. They had never dealt with foreigners before, so they couldn't imagine that foreigners knew the rules so well. After communicating with them, they found out that the British had their own customs.
Huo Chong looked at the list of goods and saw one of the items, his heart was churning. Sure enough, opium was being sold on British merchant ships.
As a Chinese, Huo Chong hates drugs. However, as a businessman and a person who hopes to become a capitalist, Huo Chong knows how much profit opioids can bring.
Not only opioids, but also cocaine, which has not yet been refined and used, are good anesthetics and analgesics.
As long as the last two words of the anesthetic drug are "caine", they are all molecules of the cocaine series. Even before Huo Chong went to South America to make cocaine, Shandong no longer used ether for anesthesia, but used opium purchased sporadically as raw materials to make anesthetics.
Thinking of this, Huo Chong gritted his teeth and called the health department staff.
When the British merchant Henry heard that the Chinese wanted to import opium, he was a little puzzled. But he didn't have any special ideas. He just replied: "I wonder how much you need?"
The negotiator from the Ministry of Commerce answered readily, "It's not about how much we need. China is so big, we can buy as much as you have. The problem is what price you can get. If your price is too high, even one pound is too much for us. If your price is cheap, we will buy tens of thousands of pounds."
Originally, the negotiators from the Ministry of Commerce thought that this was a good talk, but they did not expect that the British businessman Henry was not tempted at all. "Sir, we can only transport so many goods on one ship. If the profit from the goods transported on one ship is not as good as one kilogram, why don't we transport one kilogram? Instead, we can use the cabin to load other things."
From a business perspective, seeing that the other party was also a very serious businessman, the Ministry of Commerce negotiators could only respond carefully.
When both sides were competing purely on price and profit, the bargaining was a simple matter. In the end, a price was finally agreed upon, which was about the same as the previous opium import price.
After determining the demand for a specific commodity like opium, the negotiation was left to others. Many of the goods transported on the British ship at this time were ordinary goods, and the negotiators had no interest in them after taking a look. These handicrafts did not show any special advantages, but rather disadvantages. The negotiators were only a little interested in the shape and so on, and had no interest in these industrial products themselves.
However, according to customs regulations, people have declared goods and paid customs duties. These British people can contact merchants and seek buyers within the permitted scope.
Huo Chong looked at the samples he brought back and didn't even want to laugh. The things in the book were rough in texture and even worse in appearance. If they were given to Huo Chong for free, he would think they took up too much space. It was even more impossible to buy them with money.
No wonder Britain had to use force to open trading ports during the Opium War. It would be strange if the Chinese were willing to buy such rubbish consumer products.
Pushing those things aside, Huo Chong took out a few things and placed them in front of the negotiators.
Morphine base, an alkaloid extracted directly from opium, is often called "yellow peel" or "yellow arsenic" in drug trafficking. It contains about 60% to 70% morphine, is light coffee-colored, has an opium smell, and is in fine granular form. Crude morphine, often called "No. 1 heroin" in drug trafficking, contains 70% to 90% morphine hydrochloride. It is dark brown, beige, and white in color, and is in powder or block form. Morphine tablets, legally produced narcotic drugs, are divided into morphine hydrochloride and morphine sulfate. They are beige or yellow in color and are in flake form.
Huo Chong provided morphine hydrochloride in a small exquisite glass bottle. In the puzzled eyes of the negotiators, Huo Chong said: "You can ask those British guys if anyone is sick or in severe pain."
The negotiator immediately replied, "Yes! They have sent someone over and are looking for a doctor to treat him."
"Oh? What disease? Is it an infectious disease?" Huo Chong became a little nervous.
"Of course it's not an infectious disease. After checking, we found it was appendicitis. We have already performed surgery."
"Then you go and ask the British if they need anesthetics for surgery." Huo Chong felt relieved.
At this time, Henry the Englishman, or more precisely, Henry the subject of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and several other people including the first mate were surrounding the crew member who had escaped death, asking him questions left and right, and at the same time checking the wound on the crew member's abdomen.
If you accidentally cut your finger or bruised your knee, the pain is unbearable, but if you undergo surgery without anesthesia, the pain is even more unbearable.
Europe began studying the human body after the Black Death, and after hundreds of years of accumulation, there were certainly some results. However, before the mid-19th century, Western surgical operations were performed without anesthesia. At that time, patients undergoing surgery were like prisoners receiving cruel punishment.
"Can the Chinese actually make ice?" the first mate insisted.
The sailor had to answer for the dozens of times: "They didn't use ice, nor did they hit me. They just pricked me with something a few times, but I didn't feel any pain."
"Are you so scared by the surgical tools of Chinese surgeons?" another guy couldn't help but make a joke.
"Don't joke." Henry said unhappily.
The guy who was joking stuck out his tongue, but still looked happy.
Henry knew that the guy who was joking was a friend of the patient, and he said that out of sheer joy. Because if a sailor got appendicitis during a voyage, it was almost certain death. First there was severe abdominal pain, and finally because the appendix was completely rotten, pus entered the abdominal cavity, and finally caused a full-blown high fever, and died miserably.
However, the Chinese were able to make the patient feel no pain and complete the operation at the same time. This technology is amazing. No, this is not amazing, it is even a miracle.
The guy who joked with the surgeon's tools wasn't even joking, the surgeons who performed the surgery were disgustingly "hard-hearted". The doctors themselves admitted that this kind of surgery made them sick. Therefore, painless surgery is what patients beg for and what doctors yearn for.
Doctors have tried some methods, such as soaking or showering the area to be operated on in ice water to make it numb, pressing the affected area to make it numb, letting the patient drink until he is drunk, or adding opium to whiskey, but none of these methods can effectively relieve the patient's pain. It is said that a doctor asked his assistant to hit the patient's head with a wooden stick to make the patient faint before performing the operation.
Henry was already roughly sure that the lucky guy on the opposite side not only did not get hit, but even felt very relaxed. The most incredible thing was that there was not even any sign of inflammation on the guy's wound.
Many patients will develop wound inflammation shortly after surgery, and half of the patients do not die from the pain but from suppuration of the wound.
I have to find a way to get this anesthetic! Henry had a strong desire in his heart.
Henry met the negotiator again and thanked him first. Then he tried to get the anesthetic out of him very skillfully.
We are all thousand-year-old foxes, so there is no need to hide it. The Chinese negotiators immediately understood Henry's idea.
After a while of communication, both sides have determined their positions. British junk goods have no market in China, and the customs will certainly not stop the British from looking for Chinese merchants, but they also have little confidence in the British sales.
The only thing that seemed to be okay was probably the sale of opium. So the two sides might as well use the trade of silk for opium and silk for silver to solve the current situation.
After listening to this, Henry said decisively: "I want your anesthetic."
"That thing is very expensive. Why do you insist so much?" The Chinese negotiators began to play the long game.
"Being expensive isn't a problem. It's really not a problem." Henry insisted.
The business negotiations were a huge success. When the final negotiation results were delivered to Huo Chong, he couldn't help but sigh.
In Huo Chong's opinion, every word of this agreement to exchange opium for morphine really exuded the scent of sin.
It's not that opium is not a good thing. In this world, talking about toxicity instead of dosage is just hooliganism.
For example, arsenic oxide, also known as arsenic trioxide, is a poison in any civilized country, or potassium cyanide, which is even more toxic.
However, if a molecule of arsenic oxide or a molecule of potassium cyanide enters the human body, although they are both highly toxic, they will not cause death.
If opium is used only according to the doctor's instructions, it actually has a very good therapeutic effect. The premise is that you must listen to the doctor's will.
For example, cephalosporins are very effective in reducing inflammation, but if you take cephalosporins and don't follow the doctor's advice, and insist on drinking, then don't blame the doctor for harming you if something goes wrong.
Opium (English opium, Arabic Afyūm), also known as opium, commonly known as opium, comes from the capsule of the poppy plant and contains more than 20 alkaloids, which can be divided into phenanthrene and isoquinoline. The former includes morphine (content about 10%) and codeine, and the latter includes papaverine.
Opium is a primary drug. Depending on where it is produced, it may be black or brown. It has a strong smell, like ammonia or old urine. Generally, after being boiled and fermented, it becomes cooked opium that can be smoked by people and is made into strips, blocks or cakes. At this time, it is brown or golden yellow and has a sweet smell when smoked.
The opium poppy, considered by archaeologists to be a symbol of transcendent power, was discovered by chance when people in the Neolithic Age traveled through the mountains on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. The cultivation of the poppy began in Asia Minor and spread over a long period of time in this ancient world. The history of obtaining opium from the poppy plant is more than 6,000 years.
Its main use is in medical treatment, and it is still used in medicines, such as opium powder, opium tablets, compound platycodon powder, Toshi powder, platycodon tablets, etc., which are mainly used for cough and diarrhea.
Finally, Huo Chong signed the agreement. In this damn era, diarrhea could kill people. At this time, a small grain of opium could save a life.
Of course, washing hands frequently and drinking hot water are the real way to go. This requires that everyone has easy access to a quick source of water.
After the agreement was signed, the head of the medical department came to Huo Chong and asked, "Teacher, how is this morphine made?"
Huo Chong rolled his eyes at the guy. Although he was one of his students, Huo Chong still didn't want to tell him how to use morphine. But since he asked such a question, Huo Chong didn't want to let him go. "Li Hong, you should prepare and find some young people who are willing to take risks. Go to Europe as medical exchange personnel and learn surgery from their colleagues there."
Li Hong was very surprised after hearing this, and finally just agreed. However, no one expected that Henry, a merchant from the United Kingdom, would immediately ask to leave after getting the morphine and doing experiments. He didn't even consider selling the goods.
As a last resort, we could only pick three men and send them on board the ship.
Looking at the backs of these people, Huo Chong was really worried that his own people might die on the way. But the contact to Europe could not be easily given up.
What if the British took these three people as hostages? Huo Chong was very worried, but he finally held back.
The exact date of morphine's extraction and discovery is controversial, but it is generally believed to have been discovered by Sertürner between 1805 and 1816. Sertürner was a pharmacist's assistant who worked to understand the fundamental principles of morphine's pharmaceutical effects and later isolated morphine crystals by soaking raw opium in hot water and ammonia.
At the time, Zeltener had no idea what his discovery would do. He first tested it on dogs (all of whom died), then on himself and three boys. He eventually documented the new compound, saying it was similar to opium, relieving pain and causing excitement. But too much of it would cause feelings of anxiety (disgust), respiratory depression, nausea, vomiting, and a suppressed cough reflex. He found that it was nearly ten times more effective than opium in suppressing pain. It was later named morphine, after the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus.
Huo Chong made morphine based on this article. Although there was no synthetic ammonia in this era, there was a lot of urine. By extracting urea from urine and heating it to decompose it, ammonia can be obtained.
Huo Chong even considered making laughing gas. He had seen this thing on a popular science program. And this thing was discovered earlier in history.
Maybe they want to seize the market? Otherwise, the Europeans will definitely find out.
The discovery of anesthetics can be traced back to the late 18th century, when the outstanding British chemist Priestley and French chemist Lavoisier discovered oxygen in the air and recognized the effects of oxygen. Priestley produced oxygen in 1771 and nitrous oxide in 1772, which later became the first anesthetic, laughing gas. In 1775, he reported his discovery and pointed out that candles burned more vigorously in oxygen. He placed mice in sealed oxygen and air of the same volume, and the mice in oxygen lived longer. Lavoisier's research focused on the relationship between oxygen and respiration. Through experiments, he showed that there are two gases in the air, one related to combustion and respiration, and the other is inert. He found that the oxygen consumption of animals is related to the activities they engage in and the type of food they feed, as well as the temperature of the environment. His observations have already involved basic theoretical issues of respiration. Due to people's understanding of the role of oxygen in breathing and maintaining life, a certain proportion of oxygen was required to be added to inhaled general anesthetics. This can be said to be related to the research work of Priestley and Lavoisier.
